domain:betonit.substack.com
SSCReader
9m ago
Can you suggest a simpler and more plain way of indicating this? I thought the caps and everything did the job. Maybe a (TM)?
Well the problem is it comes across as sneering at your (presumed) outgroup. For a start is it really lefty beliefs? Our resident Indian Mod-Doctor is not left wing and he thinks you can be cured of being an addict. I am centre-leftish and I think you can't. If you think that the general zeitgeist is that addicts can be cured and it didn't used to be, you can just say that. No need to posit any left/right belief unless that is part of your point and you then flesh it out, otherwise it just comes across as being an unnecessary sideswipe.
Sure, anyone in theory might become an addict, until they try cocaine or whatever they won't know. Someone who is an addict has tried X and then been addicted to X. My observation of relatives (and work in social care in the past), is that the desire for whatever substances they were addicted to never goes away. If it is possible for that desire to permanently to go away then I would agree they are no longer an addict. So the definition is "An addict is someone who has at any point in the past been addicted to X AND still has that desire." In practice I have never seen someone who lost that desire. However it might be possible for treatment in the future to remove that. I just haven't seen any evidence that current treatment really can. What it usually does is give coping strategies for avoiding relapsing in my experience.
Now there are grey areas here, what is the difference between someone who tries cocaine, likes it but is never addicted, versus someone who tried it, got addicted and then is able to resist that desire to use it again? If both people never use cocaine again is there a difference between them? i would suggest yes, in that if the latter's willpower is eroded (through tragedy, being put on painkillers during a hospital visit etc.) then they can relapse into addiction, while the former is not at risk of that.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16m ago
Conscription is evidence against, but it's not the whole story.
People don't want to do military service even when they agree with the cause and want someone to stay in the fight. Ukraine had an army of 40% conscripts back in 2013 with no trenches in sight.
2rafa
19m ago
I agree. Any Indian could legally move to England through the entire period of the British occupation of India. There were even Indian MPs, Indian students at elite public schools and British universities and so on. But there was little demand to immigrate. A big reason for mass immigration is ease of travel and mass media. The UK only imposed restrictions on Commonwealth/Empire immigration years after WW2.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
24m ago
The laws do have to improve the situation, thanks to jurisprudence about "narrow tailoring" and "compelling public interest."
Narrow tailoring and compelling public interest apply when strict scrutiny is required. There's no need for strict scrutiny here, unless you accept that sleeping in public is a Constitutional right. And even if there were, there should be no need for a compelling public interest to improve things "for the homeless"; the compelling public interest could easily be to keep the park available for the non-homeless.
That Kavanaugh is concentrating only on the putative benefit to the defendants indicates that the interests of the rest of the public are at best secondary.
Blaming progressivism, including European progressives and fellow travelers and influence of certain non Europeans and their activist movements (such as black activist movements and Jewish activist movements and the first included plenty of the later) for "cucking" Europeans is correct but it was influenced by versions of Christianity. Even though atheistic ideology has been even more influential. I do think Judaism, as in religious Judaism gets too little blame, not only for the direct influence of Jews, but also in the way Christianity is said to resemble such far left movements, well that applies even more for Judaism. Of course it applies especially to the Jews with their religion and their understanding that says they never didn't do nothing wrong, were oppressed by the evil other, but they will have their revenge and rule as they deserve, but the influence to progressive movements and progressive identity grievance movements in general, both of ethnic groups, and of groups like women, LGBT, etc, is of course notable. Not only just to the sizable influence of actual Jews, but the actual Jewish grievance perspective. Exactly in the way people claim non Christians ideologically share elements with Christianity.
Which I think there is some of that. And just like there has been a far left Jewish tradition, we even had a direct history of Christian radicals going even before 20th century, even if they weren't the dominant strain in Christianity. There is a difference of course with the Jewish perspective which isn't pathologically altruist, and the European Christian progressive perspective, but I do think Black Christianity is much closer to the Jewish perspective where it is a grievance movement that admits no wrong for its own, and always seeks more for its group under the framing of universal justice.
Since official Christianity through modernity includes the progressive version though, you can't really pretend that version of Christianity isn't pro subservient/self hating Europeans.
Since I don't think being maximally self-centered as a group is good, nor pathologically altruist is good, usually civilizations more in the sweet spot were more Christian than today. But it does matter what kind of Christianity you got. If your goal is to follow the goal I mentioned, pathologically altruist Christianity is worse for a civilization than a more secular approach that isn't pathologically altruist. So, I don't think the terminal goal should be "Christianity only", but there ought to be tolerance between those Christians and not Christians who aren't for the agenda to destroy european civilization.
In fact, I would argue the pro non-white immigration came from the secular left or if you want to argue it's the right neoliberalism.
I do agree it comes more from that. Also, neoliberalism is the secular cultural left though, just pro capitalism. It isn't right wing enough to be right, and insufficiently right wing to even be the center. The left has been influenced both by Christianity, and by anti-christian ideology even more so. And of course it has been very influenced, especially in its 20th century manifestation by Judaism and Jews. Indeed, it is really silly to talk about progressivism in modernity and not talk about progressive Judaism/reform Judaism. And progressive Judaism is of course enormously influenced by Judaism the religion, but with the removal of certain aspects.
guajalote
25m ago
It blows my mind how often smart people with STEM backgrounds assume the legal system can be hacked like a computer. Federal judges are smart people who have discretion over how they handle their docket. If the city has 60 similar laws, the judge is going to tell the city to pick the one (or maybe two or three if he's generous) laws that they believe to be on the strongest constitutional footing and treat that law as representative.
hydroacetylene
26m ago
The law in question for Lawrence specifically only applied to homosexual sodomy.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. From those who have much, much is expected (and the corollary, from those who have nothing, nothing is expected, explains Grant's Pass). Blessed are the poor. Etc. It's a slave morality.
You're passing a progressive or nietzschean interpretation of those elements as their true, indisputable meaning. Consider the possibility those teach self-discipline ("bearing the cross") rather than as statements bashing those high in status.
Blessed are the poor. [...] from those who have nothing, nothing is expected
The beatitudes describe various hardships as the blessings of God. "Blessed are the X" is not to say the status of poverty/mourning/persecution intrinsically grants righteous status — that is, "poor people are good" — but that poverty/mourning/persecution are blessings from heaven to mortify the evil in you. In this reading, being rich, happy, and safe carries the dangers of you becoming self-satisfied and thus not seeking God. To the contrary, in another context of Jesus's ministry, the poor person who receives only one talent is cast into hell for sitting on his laurels. The two richer servants are praised and the master grants them greater dominion in his service (AKA puts them above the lesser servants).
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven."
The lesson here is that the rich man does not value God higher than his own material status. When challenged on the point, he prefers money; his mouth says "I want God" but his mind says "I want earthly passions" — this lesson holds for the beggar with his bottle just as much as Scrooge McDuck with his gold swimming pool. At other parts of scripture, Jesus meets well-to-do people and does not demand they pauper themselves for God's kingdom.
To be clear, it's very questionable that Bezos can be saved, because he is chasing money and status above all else. But is not at all clear that Jesus categorically condemns money any more than he condemns enjoying marital sex, food, or earthly luxuries such as come to you in your service to God.
Harlequin5942
29m ago
You need to consider demand for relocation as well as supply in the analysis. The expected gain in 1500 AD from moving from e.g. West Africa to Europe, given the risks and the relative differences in quality of life, were pretty small compared to the expected gain from moving in 2024. It wasn't like Europeans were fighting off hoards of African immigrants. And in 1900, what would the average African villager going to do in places where they don't speak the language, don't have much marketable skills, don't have immunity to local diseases, and don't have a welfare state to use?
In the Imperialist period, the transfer was the other way: hordes of European economic migrants swarming to the Americas and Africa.
In the UK, a lot of the black immigration was driven by things like African nurses coming over for work after 1945, during a period of labour shortages in the UK.
I would say that the key factors were (a) the Great Divergence in economic prosperity between the West and the Rest, due to the rise liberal capitalism in the former; (b) differences in population growth, and (c) better information transfer, so that even poor Africans could know that the poor in the West enjoyed a better standard of living.
Restrictions on immigration, with a few exceptions (like the White Australia policy) were less important than the above factors, I think.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
32m ago
The laws do have to improve the situation, thanks to jurisprudence about "narrow tailoring" and "compelling public interest." Here's the full exchange in question (pp. 52-56):
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: You've said several times that it's a difficult policy question, a complicated policy question. I think everyone would agree with that.
How does this law help deal with the complicated policy issues?
MS. EVANGELIS: One of the most difficult challenges is getting people the help that they need. And laws like this allow cities to intervene, and they're an important tool in helping incentivize people to accept shelter.
So Ms. Johnson, for example, had said in her deposition -- it's in the Joint Appendix -- that she does not wish to stay at the Gospel Rescue Mission. One of the reasons is because of her dog. She also had other reasons. She doesn't like being around people and -- and so forth. People have all sorts of circumstances. It's very complex. And the individual decisions --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: How does it help if there are not -- how does it help -- the rule here, the law here, how does it help if there are not enough beds for the number of homeless people in the jurisdiction?
MS. EVANGELIS: So, for Ms. Johnson, she sometimes stays with a friend. So there are other --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: How about more -- more generally, though?
MS. EVANGELIS: Yes.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: I guess, if there's a mismatch between the number of beds available in shelters, even including Gospel Rescue, and the number of homeless people, there are going to be a certain number of people who there's nowhere to go?
MS. EVANGELIS: That -- that is a difficult policy question. And we --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: How does this law deal --
MS. EVANGELIS: Yes.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: -- help with that policy?
MS. EVANGELIS: So it encourages people to accept alternatives when they come up so that fewer people end up camping. It also -- there is harm in simply camping. Whatever materials people are using when they are living in public spaces without plumbing and infrastructure, there's harm to the whole city and to the whole community, as well as to them.
We know that -- that encampments and these conditions also breed crime and very dangerous conditions. So the City has an interest in protecting everyone, including --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Do you think the constitutional rule should be different when the number of beds available in the jurisdiction exceeds the number of homeless people versus the number of homeless people exceeds the number of beds available in shelters?
MS. EVANGELIS: No. That's what we've seen in the Ninth Circuit. We've seen that that is unworkable. There is no way to count what beds are available and who is perhaps willing to take one and who would consider it adequate.
Then the question becomes, are those beds adequate? So, here, Gospel Rescue Mission again --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: That's a separate issue, I agree.
...
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: I actually have one last question. When you get out of jail if you end up -- what's going to happen then? Aren't -- you still don't have a bed available. So how does this help?
MS. EVANGELIS: So the -- and -- and I want -- I do want to make a point about that -- about the criminal aspect. The trespass law here is only triggered after several civil citations.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Right. No.
MS. EVANGELIS: And at that point --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: If you run through that cycle --
MS. EVANGELIS: Yes.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: -- and you end up in jail for 30 days, then you get out, I mean, you're not going to be any better off than you were before in finding a bed if there aren't -- going to my earlier question, if there aren't beds available in the jurisdiction, unless you're removed from the jurisdiction or you decide to -- to leave somehow.
MS. EVANGELIS: No. There are services available, and the jurisdiction can put you in touch with services and programs to help you in those circumstances. And for many people, that is a point where they're able to get into treatment. So that intervention actually saves lives.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Okay. Thank you.
Kavanaugh is pushing on the Petitioners' insistence that their law helps solve the problem. Obviously, it does help them in many cases. So he pushes on the rock-and-hard-place situation in which the city's preferred intervention is unavailable. As I understand it, this was a big part of the 9th Circuit ruling, since it basically invented a regulatory regime for availability, and no one was happy with it. He touches on the same subject later with Kneedler when they're discussing whether the Court needs to address Robinson at all (p. 112). He doesn't draw conclusions in the transcript, but I can guess how Kavanaugh feels about volunteering the courts to micromanage local policy.
The Petitioners emphasize that their policy should help. The Respondents address edge cases where it won't. Kavanaugh explores that, as did several of the other justices, because this is law and lawyers love edge cases. If he votes to keep the 9th decision and strike down the ordinance, I don't think it'll be driven by his bleeding heart.
hanikrummihundursvin
33m ago
It's a hard pill to swallow but the Catholics that came and the influence they brought did little good for the trajectory of American culture as they decidedly helped move the elite 'leftward'.
hydroacetylene
38m ago
contemporary 'Christianity' which is just a hedonistic gay progressive with AIDS calling themselves a bishop.
This is a small minority of denominations and they are typically doing very poorly.
hydroacetylene
40m ago
It’s true that Christianity is hostile to slavery and racially egalitarian in a way that Islam and judaism and Hinduism and the like mostly aren’t. But it’s also true that Christianity has sometimes been a motivator for race laws, as in Spain’s ‘old Christian’ laws, or ideas about the curse of Cham.
Christian marriage laws(women have to consent, can’t be too young, a marriage is a marriage even over parental opposition, and you can’t marry your cousin) tend to break down clans over a long enough timescale, but I’m not sure how much connection clans have to racism. Certainly Christianity tends to believe it has a civilizing mission as a missionary religion, but so does Islam.
cjet79
42m ago
Which is potentially the rule no longer, because if the homeless don't want the shelter for some reason you are screwed.
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
44m ago
Of course many founding fathers believed that slavery was wrong but that there was still a clear intellectual hierarchy of races... many abolitionists did believe in the 1820s and 1830s that black and white were equally capable,
These aren't necessarily contradictions in terms. There was widespread belief in a much more nuanced and fine-grained set of racial distinctions, the idea of a "white" race as opposed to a German/English/French race, or a white race as opposed to a "race of labourers" and a race of aristocrats, is developing throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Many at different times have said that the black and white races contain, in due proportion, the capable and the incapable. Or one could believe that blacks are dumber than the English and less organized than the Germans, but smarter than the Irish and more moral than the Jews.
Gross white racial superiority is largely a modern innovation.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
46m ago
I'm not sure if the version we sang as secondary school kids at Mass in the late 70s/early 80s is the one you mean, but the very name makes me shudder.
I will gladly donate to this worthy ecumenical project!
2rafa
1hr ago
I don’t disagree with the nuance you discuss, but it’s also true that people don’t necessarily fully think through the implications of the political and ideological positions they advocate. This is a big point of Moldbug’s: by our standards many of the key thinkers of the enlightenment were deeply conservative/reactionary, they didn’t seek to dismantle a lot of the things that subsequent liberal thinkers did, but they nevertheless established forms of ideological enquiry that through processes like the Hegelian dialectic created modern progressivism in a continuous process.
It can both be true that 1776 leads inexorably to 2024 and that none of the founding fathers would be remotely happy with the current ruling ideology of the United States. Similarly, it can be true that the early Christians established a religion that had a tendency towards universalism and universal equality even though the early Christians still believed in the vast majority of social institutions (slavery, patriarchy, tribalism) of their age.
SomethingMusic
1hr ago
I don't even want to imagine what it's like trying to drive in urban India. Of course, my poor American perception of India is bifurcated between 'enlightened' gurus whose philosophy saves humanity, people living in extreme poverty bathing in cow dung, and the people trying to scam me from call centers.
2rafa
1hr ago
Yeah I completely agree with everything you say here. But Malay discrimination against the Chinese (or indeed Bangladeshis) has no basis in Muslim scripture and isn’t justified religiously locally; the Chinese are infidels, sure, but so are the Christian bumiputera who benefit from affirmative action policies. In fact the Malaysia constitution guarantees that Christian bumiputera get the special privileges etc. What happens in Malaysia is just the standard thing that happens with market dominant minorities anywhere in the world, and compared to the historic treatment of Jews, the way the Ugandans treated the Indians, arguably even the way that the South Africans treat the whites now, the Chinese actually have it very good.
As for the Malay Arab worship/LARP, I’ve commented on it before (it’s far from unique, the Maldivians engage in it too, even Desi Muslims do to some extent). The point is that racial discrimination against foreign or minority Muslims (not non-Muslims) in the Islamic world isn’t justified using scripture but by paeans to nativism or for economic purposes. The same is true in the Middle East. Everyone knows that Islam itself doesn’t encourage ethnic separatism and is a universalist religion.
For hardcore Nietzscheans who consider all Abrahamism slave morality
It's worth remembering that in Nietzsche's discussion of master/slave morality in the Genealogy, he initially introduces slave morality as a structural phenomenon - it's defined by its relationship with other systems of morality, not by its inherent content, which therefore at least in principle opens up the possibility of a type of Christianity that is not founded on slave morality (or indeed, the possibility that those who appear to be masters are actually slaves):
The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all, – its action is basically a reaction. The opposite is the case with the noble method of valuation: this acts and grows spontaneously, seeking out its opposite only so that it can say ‘yes’ to itself even more thankfully and exultantly, – its negative concept ‘low’, ‘common’, ‘bad’ is only a pale contrast created after the event compared to its positive basic concept, saturated with life and passion, ‘we the noble, the good, the beautiful and the happy!
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
there is a difference between "science" and "New Correct Lefty Science"
Can you suggest a simpler and more plain way of indicating this? I thought the caps and everything did the job. Maybe a (TM)?
It is possible to not be an active addict... an addict can be a "monster", then return to being normal for years or decades or the rest of their life, even if the monster risk is always hanging over them.
I hate to say it, but this reeks of epicycles. Like, it's also always possible for someone who has never been an addict before to become an addict at some point in the future. If so, what conceptual content does "addict" have? What is its definition? Is it something like, "An addict is someone who has at any point in the past been addicted to drugs"? If so, it's another one of those amazing definitions like those that just claim, by definition, that it's theoretically impossible for someone to change from being homosexual to being heterosexual (and that anything that appears otherwise must be hidden mystical bisexualism). Ok, sure, you can define your terms that way, in a way that makes it true, by definition, that people who are addicted to drugs cannot become not addicted to drugs, but that's not saying anything about the science of addiction, or anything we've "learned" by science since the Robinson era. It's saying that you've simply adopted a different definition. Then, we'd have to wrestle with how changing definitions affect the legal and philosophical concepts involved. Plus, from a culture war observer position, I'll absolutely enjoy just watching and noting the various changing of definitions, how they may come from political pressures rather than new scientific results, and how such changes interact with the broader public discourse.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
But he is not saying “they don’t matter” socially or politically, because then he would advocate for freeing slaves and treating women like men. But nobody was advocating for these things. So whatever Paul is saying here, it can’t have anything to do with actions related to the polis (the social, the political). The “in Christ” isn’t some stand-in for “now that Christ has come, we treat everyone the same”, because we know from the text and from history that they had rules regarding women and rules regarding slaves. It makes the most sense to understand “in Christ” in its spiritual dimension. Consider:
-
[a few sentences above our passage] If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
-
[a few sentences down from our passage] Wives, submit to your husbands. Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters.
Paul could very well have advocated that women be treated like men and the slaves be freed by their masters. It’s all on the same page of the letter. But given Paul didn’t even sense the possibility of a contradiction, I find it most reasonable to conclude that we are talking about things “not on Earth”.
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
Actually, Christian observance in America reached a new high in the postwar era. The height of weekly church attendance in America was in the 1950s. America was less religiously observant in 1920 than in 1950, hard as that may be to believe.
I said nothing that contradicts that. I instead explain why this stopped being the case due to the demographic change in elites.
It’s just that American Christianity was never staunchly ethnonationalist, it existed alongside ethnic nationalism but it wasn’t of it. The same is true in the Islamic world today, you can have tribes with a strong sense of ethnic identity, but it’s not because of Islam, it just exists alongside it.
I don't understand what this means. Ethnonationalism is just an expression of ingroup bias. Any group based belief or ideology relies on ingroup bias. When you don't have ingroup bias you end up with contemporary 'Christianity' which is just a hedonistic gay progressive with AIDS calling themselves a bishop. You start worshipping the outsider and humiliating yourself for their validation and acceptance. Which is what the broad modern Christian movement is at this point.
SomethingMusic
1hr ago
I'd donate for that. Give me some time and proper motivation and I could probably write it.
People want clean, nice public spaces not occuppied by drug addicts, criminals, and bums. If you make it so that cities can't kick out the bums, then these nice public spaces will all become privately-owned or corporate. And public parks become de facto property of the bums.
Talk about abstractions like "status" just seems like a distraction to me. I think this is a sign of a society in decline. We can't do anything, we have to parse out all the implications of natural rights and status. Well. I feel very confident in saying that the people who designed our Constitutional system of rights would have gladly kicked some bums out of public.
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