Damian

About Damian

http://asundayofliberty.com

Ornamental hermit. Sciolist. Musician manqué. Poetaster. Armchair psychologist. Pseudo-philosopher. Founder of Panta Rheism™. The complete Rabelaisian man. Great eater, deep drinker, stout fighter, prodigious lover; clear thinker, creator of beauty, seeker of truth and prophet of heroic grandeurs. I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and logical comprehension. (Contact: asundayofliberty at gmail)

Posts by Damian :

Reaping Whirlwinds

By in conspicuous crusading, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Christopher Rufo:

Conservatives have recently scored surprise victories against left-wing corporate culture, with successful pressure campaigns against a trio of blue-chip companies—Disney, Target, and Bud Light—that have revealed the potential of a culture-war tactic once considered the Left’s stock-in-trade: the consumer boycott.

The campaigns are notable because they drew blood, figuratively speaking. Disney, which promised to embed radical gender theory in its children’s programming, watched its stock price plummet and signaled a retreat from the culture war. Target, which featured “breast binders” as part of its seasonal “Pride Collection,” saw a decline in sales and promised to “pause, adapt, and learn.” Bud Light featured a transgender “influencer” in an advertising campaign, sending its reputation and sales into freefall.

What lessons can be drawn from these examples? And how can conservatives use boycotts to fight left-wing cultural capture?

Helen Andrews, in her book Boomers, describing the tactics that brought Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to prominence:

Interestingly, if Breadbasket had tried these tactics only a few decades earlier, courts would have considered them illegal. Boycotts, except in limited circumstances, were considered unfair commercial interference, and victimized owners could sue organizers for damages. In a landmark case in 1934, the Harlem agitator Sufi Abdul Hamid, also known as Black Hitler for his vocal support for the Third Reich, launched a boycott against the A. S. Beck shoe store on 125th Street demanding that it hire more blacks on its sales staff. A New York judge ruled the picket unlawful, not because store patrons had been violently assaulted (though they had been), but because Hamid and his picketers had no connection to the store. If it had been a protest by black Beck’s employees demanding better treatment, that would have been a labor dispute and thus protected by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. But this was a​ conspiracy against a lawful business by a third party seeking to impose its political preferences. Even a peaceful boycott would have been illegal.

I was not aware of this. I thought tedious consumer boycotts led by political activists had always been with us, like death, taxes and the poor. I had so many futile arguments in my misspent youth against left-wing enthusiasts for boycotting. Oh, man, what I wouldn’t give to see the old lefty blogosphere prosecuted en masse for “conspiracy against a lawful business by a third party seeking to impose its political preferences.” Is this what the edgy kids mean when they say RETVRN?

But alas, as with free speech, I’m resigned to the idea that it will take people like Rufo leading a counter-revolution before we have any chance of finding our way back to the detente of old-fashioned liberal pluralism. I don’t like it, and I’ll never participate in it myself, but if I see my old liberal pals squealing in protest, I’ll be happy to remind them, in the words of Les Claypool, “I’m the one who told you “Told you so.”

Cry ‘Havoc’! And Let Slip the Dogs of Cancellation

By in free speech, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Ian Leslie:

In recent weeks the air has been thick with accusations of hypocrisy, flying both ways. Left wing American academics, justifiably upset about being censored by employers for pro-Palestinian speech, have accused those who oppose cancel culture of going quiet (even if that’s not actually true). Free speech enthusiasts like me have taken great pleasure in seeing far leftists suddenly discover the importance of unrestricted speech. Much as I enjoy schadenfreude, charging someone with hypocrisy is the easy part. I agree with Matt Yglesias when he says, “Any time you find yourself prosecuting a hypocrisy case, you ought to take some time to consider what you think is actually correct.”

Free speech isn’t just a question of the law, it’s a question of norms, and establishing norms is up to all of us. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America he noted that although there were more formal protections of speech there than in Europe or anywhere else, there was no place with less “independence of mind and true freedom of discussion”. The social pressure to conform was too great.

When J.S. Mill read Tocqueville’s Democracy In America he absorbed this point and incorporated it into his theory of liberty. Mill argued that having legal protections for the rights of individuals to speak freely is a minimal but insufficient condition of a free society. You also need a culture that tolerates and supports that freedom. Otherwise, even without a tyrant on a throne telling you what you can and can’t say, people will still be subject to “social tyranny”.

I’ve always considered myself a free speech maximalist, but lately, I’ve started to lean more toward something like this:

In other words, our cancel-happy progressive friends are simply going to have to feel some serious pain in order to be reminded why it’s a bad idea to overturn social norms in favor of the pursuit of raw power. If that means a bunch of academics or radical students suddenly find their career prospects curtailed, oh, well. We didn’t make this bed, but we’ll be happy to tuck you in and bid you sweet dreams. Free speech in its ideal libertarian sense is like pacifism — it’s only workable when your opponents already share your basic moral values. In the face of a genuine enemy who only recognizes the morality of that Frank Herbert quotation, it’s suicidal.

I realize that this is a dangerous proposition. Once you’ve decided that certain ideas are beyond the pale, what’s to stop you from rationalizing that all criticism and dissent is essentially giving aid and comfort to the enemy? In the abstract, I don’t know if there’s a satisfactory answer to that question. To me, though, that just means “so much the worse for abstract reasoning.” As an atheist, I run into that sort of objection all the time: if you don’t believe in a transcendent law or lawgiver, what’s to stop you from raping, robbing and pillaging on a whim? Lots of things, including social norms, practical reasoning, and what Adam Smith called “natural sympathy.” I don’t mean to digress into theological debates; my point is just that everyday life is all about discerning the difference between countless shades of grey. That judgment is shaped by experience more than abstract axioms. My judgment in this instance is that healthy social norms around free speech will only be restored through a threat of mutually assured destruction, not purity of principles.

Looks Like I Lift

By in battling personal entropy 2 Comments

I got 235 tonight. I’m especially happy about that because of how much I had to rehabilitate my shoulders from rheumatoid arthritis when I first started training.

 

We Effing Love Science

By in extraordinary popular delusions, non compos mentis, science, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening No Comments

Jerry Coyne:

In the end, we have still more evidence that Scientific American is no longer circling the drain, but is now in the drain, headed for, well, the sewers. It used to have scientists writing about their field, with no ideological bias, but now has ideologues (these authors happen to be scientist-ideologues) writing about science in a biased and misleading way.

Apparently this trend will continue, and apparently the publishers won’t do anything about it. So it goes. But those of you who want your science untainted by “progressive” ideology had best look elsewhere.

Those who advocated for Lysenkoism at least had the excuse of fearing that they and their families would be imprisoned, or worse, for dissenting. We should always remember with disgust how little it took for our modern ideologues to submit to this insanity. Peer pressure? Loss of status? Maybe having to look for a new job? Cowardly whores, all of them.

Hurt So Good

By in battling personal entropy No Comments

Michael Wolf:

We’ve now seen how almost every aspect of fitness is enhanced by increasing your maximal force production – increasing your strength. While some activities and sports require a higher amount of absolute strength than others, there’s no doubt that every single one benefits from increased strength. And we’ve also established that for increased strength, there’s no tool as useful as the barbell.

The squat rack in your local gym is probably unoccupied right this very moment. What are you waiting for?

Earlier this month, I spent a week traveling. Thousands of miles spent crammed into airplane seats or riding in an SUV over gravel roads made my hips and back hurt like hell. I realized that it’s been years since I spent so much time sitting. I stand all day at work, even when I eat. At home, I at least have more comfortable chairs to sit in, but even then, I still spend a good amount of time on my feet doing one chore or another. I have no idea how sedentary people can stand it. Are they not even aware of how uncomfortable they are? Anyway, for my birthday today, I gave myself the gift of a new squat PR: 395. We followed it with a hybrid of Bulgarian squats and one-legged deadlifts. My glutes are quite tender right now, but it’s a good kind of hurt. It’s the feeling of all that forced-seating trauma leaving the body.

Descartes Before the Horse

By in philosophy No Comments

Richard Hanania:

With the benefit of hindsight, one can always find a way to connect the Inflation Reduction Act to Foucault or something, but such theories strike me as both unlikely to be true and practically impossible to falsify. We don’t have recurring moral panics about race and sex primarily because of something any philosopher has said. Moral panics exist in many cultures and the legal regime we live under determines the forms that our own ones take.

To the extent ideas matter, I think what is important is usually more likely to be intuitions and emotions than high-minded philosophy. People feel bad about the plight of black Americans. So they adopt the idea of “let’s help them and be sensitive towards their feelings.” When a bureaucrat twists the law in his preferred direction, thus proving the importance of “ideas” in forming public policy and culture, he is more likely to be relying on simple heuristics like this than any kind of well thought out ideological doctrine.

It’s like the joke about the guy looking for his keys under the streetlight blocks away from where he dropped them, because “the light’s better here!” Writers and philosophers are unsurprisingly prone to overemphasize the historical influence of writers and philosophers. Rousseau is responsible for X, Nietzsche is responsible for Y, etc. But speaking of philosophy, I often think that David Hume’s skepticism about causality might be of use in these cases. It might just be that highly literate, contemplative people are good at discerning and articulating widespread moods and “vibes,” as the kids like to say these days. Maybe they’re simply naming something that has already been born.

He That Has Ears to Hear, Let Him Hear

By in nietzsche No Comments

John Gray:

The adolescent quality of BAP’s ideal is a point of contrast with his intellectual mentor Nietzsche. Whatever his other personal limitations – aside from the commercial sex from which he contracted syphilis as a student, Nietzsche was practically an incel – the philosopher did have a direct acquaintance with war. A medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), he contracted diphtheria and dysentery on the battlefield, permanently weakening his already uncertain health. The experience confirmed his lifelong hostility to militarism, and when he glorifies war it is most often a mental conflict to which he is referring.

Nietzsche regarded the civilisation around him as thoroughly decadent, but he was well aware that he was a living example of that condition. When he wrote of superhuman inner strength, it was as someone who suspected he was incurably spiritually diseased. Here the contrast with BAP is particularly instructive.

As I said to Douglas some time ago, regarding Emil Cioran’s aphorisms, I’ve never been impressed with any of Nietzsche’s epigones. From Foucault to Bronze Age Pervert, they all seem to have taken away all the wrong lessons and inspirations. I don’t mean it arrogantly, as if I’m the only reader who truly understood the man. I just mean, I look at Nietzsche’s writings, which I feel reasonably familiar with, and I look at what his most celebrated followers have made of them, and I’m puzzled by the apparent disconnect I see there.

When a Man Is Tired of Lifting, He Is Tired of Life

By in jests japes jokes jollies 2 Comments

Having fun with Bing’s new AI art generator. “English writer Samuel Johnson doing barbell squats with James Boswell spotting.” I had to specify “English writer” because otherwise, it seemed to think that Samuel L. Jackson was pretty much the same person.

Unbelievable. Boswell is just standing there like a useless lump, and he’s apparently too drunk to have noticed that Johnson forgot to add a fourth plate to the right side of the bar.

This one’s better. Form is good, Boswell is sober and alert. The bar looks a little flimsy, though, like it might be made of wood.

Samuel! What is going on with your form here? You’re leaning so far to your right, I’ll be surprised if you can make it back to the top. Of course, Boswell isn’t doing you any favors by holding the bar like that. Why do you even let this guy hang around you? What is he good for?

Blotto Voce

By in ohferfucksake No Comments

Freddie deBoer:

I need make no grand loyalty statements. I have no such requirement because my views on this conflict have been plain for many years: the moral imperative is that we create total legal and political equality for all people in the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, as basic democratic principles demand, and that all people in that land enjoy safety and prosperity. Hamas’s attack has put a dent in both, for Israel, and destroyed them in Gaza; clearly, this is contrary to my demands. We must have freedom and safety for all, which of course includes Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Arabs as well as African migrant workers as well as various Christians and Druze and every other kind of person, again due to absolutely bedrock democratic principles. Hamas is a theocratic body, and I am opposed to theocracy, and whatever your perspective on political violence, they have harmed the interests of Gazans and all Palestinians. They killed innocent people, which I can’t ever countenance, and by the way they’re contributing to terrible outcomes for their own side in doing so. The attack made greater Palestine more violent and less free. I don’t need to denounce the attack because it comes pre-denounced by my moral values.

The esteemed representative of the Positive Outcomes Only, Please party has spoken. You may recall that it was only a couple weeks ago that we observed this oblivious moron repeating his longstanding wish for a worldwide Marxist revolution. Given history, and given human nature, we can safely assume that the results of said revolution would dwarf the October 7th massacre, but never fear, our public intellectual would be standing athwart the chaos just as he is now, shouting, “Gentlemen! I do not countenance this! This is contrary to my demands!” This cognitive dissonance, this remarkable inability to learn anything from experience, this radiant talent for using a lot of words to say less than nothing of substance, is what you need if you want to be a Substack Superstar. “Ah! The nuance! The complexity! What a subtle thinker!” exclaims Andrew Sullivan, as he strokes his chin and readies the podcast invitation. You boring normies with your conventional opinions, like “Marxism has never worked and never will,” or “The Middle East is an intractable mess which will only end badly if it ever ends at all,” will never understand.

State Your Case With Black or White

By in foolosophy No Comments

Alan Jacobs:

The other day I wrote about the absolute cataract of essays and articles these days proclaiming the death of something — something, anything, everything: capitalism, liberalism, Trumpism, tradition, conservatism, the novel, poetry, movies … the list goes on and on.

Today I’m wondering how much this habit of mind arises from an economic system built around planned obsolescence and unrepairable devices. If we are deeply habituated to throwing away a bought object when it is no longer performing excellently, then why not do the same with ideas? Hey, this thing I believe in no longer commands universal assent. Let’s flush it.

And for that matter why not take the same approach to people? If you’re in Canada and having suicidal thoughts, then you just might have a counselor suggest medically-assisted suicide. You’re hardly worth repairing, are you? Let’s just ease you into death and get you off our books.

This must be what the Fixx meant when they sang, “One thing leads to another.” Naturally, I’m all in favor of blogs being platforms for thought experiments and extemporaneous rambling, but still, I think this one could stand to be reeled in a bit before it starts to resemble the conspiracy meme. I’m pretty sure clichés, hyperbole, and rhetorical laziness in general predate the “economic system,” and I don’t think the increased availability of euthanasia is primarily due to financial considerations. Sometimes, things just have a superficial resemblance without all being causally connected. That’s boring, though. Maybe I’ll change the title of this post to “Apophenia and the Death of Judicious Thought.”

‹ 1 2 3 4›»