Paul J Cella's blog
Posted at 11:14am on May 21, 2008 Maximos the philosopher.
By Paul J Cella
My colleague over at What’s Wrong with the World, Maximos, an old friend of Redstate to boot, is capable of some remarkable passage of philosophical synthesis. No doubt his prose style makes demands of the reader that bloggers are not accustomed to. Nevertheless, I know of few writers who can so ably render the dilemmas and disasters of modernity in politics. Herewith a sample, with some annotation by me:
In this, contemporary conservatives, right-liberals[*] almost to a man, disclose their philosophy as a mere modulation of the dominant political frameworks of modernity; we are creatures of affects and drives, desires, forces of attraction and repulsion, and political society is a contractual artifact engineered to facilitate, for the individual, the maximal potential satisfaction of appetites compatible with the MPSoA of all other individuals in the simulacrum of society[**]. The specific good of the political is the facilitation, and protection, of a regime of preference-satisfaction; the political is instrumental towards the acquisition of the objects of desire, and towards their security from the vicissitudes of history, the malice of our fellows, and, increasingly, the judgments rendered, from within the older teleological traditions[***], against the essentially disordered foundations of the age. In this respect, both left and right are modulations of a common theme, the left valorizing progressive lifestyle experimentation on the basis of sentimental identitarianism ("I have experienced repeated, persistent feelings of attraction to members of the same sex, and therefore, I am gay."), the right analogously valorizing a consumerist acquisitiveness ("I wish to enjoy all of the trappings of material abundance, as I define them, and no impediment should be placed across my path, no ethical crosswind should divert my trajectory."); both essentially want what they want when, how, and in the quantities they want it [****], and it is not the underlying disposition that distinguishes them, but only their objects, and the political doctrines expressive of the respective desire-object pairings.
Posted in Archived | political philosophy — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:23pm on May 5, 2008 Just Like T. Crown's Blues.
By Paul J Cella
The illustrious if mysterious T. Crown may have broken our hearts with his departure from Redstate, but it is reassuring, in a gloomy sort of way, to know that sufficient folly exists, out in the world of politics, to rouse him to post a blog now and then. In this case he examines the folly of trusting Sen. Obama’s sincerity on the subject of Rev. Wright. Oh, but there is so much more to it than that. There always is with our friend. His infectious wordiness — meandering asides, cascading allusions, obscure insults, anecdotal amusements — is exceeded only by my much more ponderous and annoying wordiness.
Posted in Archived | go read this — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:29am on Jan. 30, 2008 Quotes That Catch My Fancy
By Paul J Cella
Pejman has highlighted a characteristically excellent Andrew Ferguson essay — an essay, again characteristically, that is at once very funny and very serious. Ferguson’s target this time is the unutterable madness at back of the presidential campaign system, how it drives out normalcy and favors the monomaniac and egotist, thereby oppressing the Republic with the curious monomania of narcissists and confidence men who may actually believe the yarns they spin.
There is a better way. It used to be our way:
He entered New Hampshire politics as an advocate of religious toleration. For a while he toyed with the idea of medicine, but decided, after some reading, that too little was known to justify an honest man’s taking up doctoring as a profession. Already elected justice of the peace by his fellow townsmen, he went into a country attorney’s office to study law. He applied the same hard common sense to the law that he did to religion. He was successful as a lawyer, and in state politics, and became a man of some means, raising a family of five children in his plain white weatherboarded farmhouse. In 1802 the New Hampshire legislature elected him to the United States Senate.
— John Dos Passos, The Shackles of Power, 1966.
Posted in 17th Amendment | Archived | campaign — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:58pm on Oct. 10, 2007 The Rudy schism
By Paul J Cella
For many decades now, what we call the Conservative movement in America has found its political home in the Republican Party. It has been a very uneasy alliance, but a fruitful one. Conservatives have not only resisted the maneuvers of Liberalism with considerable success, but actually regained some ground. By the mid-1970s, it was clear that Conservatism had no other possible home, the Democrats having driven virtually anyone with a Conservative sympathy out of their party. It is vital to remember that this development — the concentration of Conservatism in one party and Liberalism in another — stands as major defeat for the former. Willmoore Kendall used to refer disdainfully to the Liberal project of saddling the country with the "special curse" of "rigidly ideological parties." When Conservatism was more diffuse across the electoral spectrum, less ideological, and less identifiable, it was more effective — especially in resisting Liberalism. It was part of the political atmosphere, and virtually every candidate for national office had to contend with it. Academic Liberals were infuriated by this, and began maneuvering to counter it. One of their maneuver was to propose ideological parties. Assuming as they did that Liberalism was the more popular position, they figured that transforming the presidential elections into vast plebiscites pitting one ideology against the other, would redound to their favor. In the short term they were wrong, and this was driven home solidly by Reagan's resounding defeats of McGovernite Liberalism. But in the long-term the curse came to fruition. Conservatism's power diminished as it was concentrated.
Posted in Archived — Comments (91) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:22pm on Jun. 6, 2007 Ideological patriotism
By Paul J Cella
There have been, here at Redstate, innumerable conversations about Patriotism. The reader need only scour my archive to see how much the problem has perplexed and fascinated me, and how much readers have indulged my fascination and added thoughtful critiques.
Longtime RS reader and diarist Maximos and I have a extensive treatment of the problem of Patriotism in America posted elsewhere.
Posted in Blogosphere — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:40pm on May 30, 2007 The two freedoms: a plug.
By Paul J Cella
I have an essay up at What's Wrong with the World that will likely be of interest to Redstate readers. More web-savvy friends have counseled me recently against the mechanism of cross-posting, arguing instead that I ought to simply make note of new material, thus cross-pollinating readership, as it were.
So here is a link to my latest effort in political philosophy: "Miscellanea — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:33am on May 21, 2007 Read Mark Steyn.
By Paul J Cella
Now, I know it is commonplace to make such a recommendation as that which is conveyed in my title; but old RS hands are aware that I have long been a contrarian on this point. That is, I generally recommend that, far from reading and cheering Mark Steyn, we should rather be throwing rotten fruit at the glib old “global content provider” — for reasons too varied to get into here. But this is an exception.
Posted in Immigration — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:50am on May 8, 2007 Gas station mutterings.
By Paul J Cella
I spent $50 to fill the gas tank of my minivan the other day; and will spend about the same, all over again, this week. A mere two years ago (as I discovered recently when I happened to flip through one of my daughter’s baby books), this would have been close to half that sum. Yet the “shock” of a rise in the price of strawberries and fast food, occasioned by the enforcement of immigration law and the concomitant tightening of the labor market, would, we are regularly admonished, cripple the economy.
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:35am on May 3, 2007 What's Wrong with the World: an Announcement.
By Paul J Cella
Some months ago Redstate co-founder Josh Trevino closed up shop on another blog of his, Enchiridion Militis. Because of the generosity of a reader, who offered to host and maintain us, a successor site has been launched. The phrase enchiridion militis refers to book by Erasmus which, translated, still captures our purpose: A Handbook for the Christian Soldier.
The new site takes its name from the title of a small bold by G. K. Chesterton: What's Wrong with the World. Its statement of purpose begins: "What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: The Jihad and Liberalism."
Please come by and have a look if the subject interests you. As a taste of what you can expect there, consider this fine interpretation of Neoconservatism by long-time Redstate reader and diarist Maximos.
Thank you for your attention.
Posted in Breaking News — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:08am on Apr. 26, 2007 Esolen on masculinity.
By Paul J Cella
The Catholic news service ZENIT interviewed Professor Anthony Esolen recently on the subject of masculinity and civilization. The result is a tour-de-force of probing intellect and wisdom.
Men have a passion for the truth, and they seek that truth not generally by means of the affections, but by complex structures of various sorts. These may be structures of authority or intellect, so you have the great university system invented by the friars and the student guilds in Europe, whose curriculum was often a kind of Euclidean geometry or Newtonian calculus of theological and philosophical propositions. Men fashion “grammars” — means of organizing and understanding almost impossibly disparate phenomena. Even the humble back of a baseball card, with its grid work of subtle statistics, testifies to this fascination. Without this literal “discernment,” I mean the clear separation of what may be predicated of a thing and what may not, with systematic means for judging the matter, there can be nothing so intricate as law, the government of a city, higher learning, a church — not to mention philosophy and theology. Even men who do not possess powerful intellects naturally fall in with such structures of order, and here the affections do play a vital role; men will fall in admiration of a leader, with a powerful combination of loyalty and friendship, as naturally as they will fall in love with a woman they may wish to marry. If a society does not train boys to become such men, or if it does not allow mature men to form such natural alliances with other men for the benefit of civic life, it will degenerate.
Posted in Culture — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:09pm on Jan. 9, 2007 Cat Stevens dissembles.
By Paul J Cella
Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, recently gave an interview to The New York Times. The second half is instructive:
Posted in War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:57am on Jan. 2, 2007 A note on the peculiar institution.
By Paul J Cella
I want to call readers’ attention to an exchange of comments which may go unnoticed. This would be a misfortune, because it is emphatically worthy of careful attention. Here it is. The participants are readers AnonCon and Old Atlantic, and both contribute thoughtful things; but in the end it must be said that Old Atlantic has the better of the argument.
Particularly egregious, in my view, is the former’s initial opinion that, “There are countless instances of Muslims living at peace with their non-Muslim brethren, particularly when the latter submit (dhimmitude).” Now there may indeed be many examples of “Muslims living at peace with their non-Muslim brethren,” but the effect of this comment is incalculably mischievous and, in the end, iniquitous. To render so benign a judgment on the institution of the dhimmia, in plain cold reasoning, is analogous to saying that Jim Crow was an example of "Southern whites living at peace with their black neighbors." It is unsustainable; and it is especially unfair to those who toiled, and still toil, under Islamic oppression. In truth, both Jim Crow and the dhimmia were (and in the later case, it still is), a premeditated design of systematic subjugation and humiliation, with emphasis on the latter: an offense, in short, against human dignity.
Posted in History — Comments (14) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:18pm on Nov. 17, 2006 Neighbors and patriotism
By Paul J Cella
The Sophist, an old and respected commenter, has returned to us after something of a hiatus; and is promptly falling into an old debate he and I have had over the nature and destiny of the American tradition. I’m going to touch on a few of his latest points. To get a full sense of the lineaments of this discussion, readers are advised to follow the comment thread link above.
Posted in Culture — Comments (42) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:12am on Jun. 2, 2006 The Border Patrol as Nazis: an argument with a right-wing Globalist.
By Paul J Cella
Below is a thread of debate between myself and Orrin Judd, editor and proprietor of the BrothersJudd blog. The underlying dispute is immigration, but it captures and carries in its train a host of other issues. Judd is a master of the glib (and often witty) rejoinder -- it is a talent that makes even the most infuriated commenters resistless, on occasion, before its charm. But here, I'm afraid, his cleverness has betrayed the folly of the ideology that moves so much right-wing opinion on these issues. Mr. Judd, in my view, is simply carrying many of the arguments of the right-wing enthusiasts of mass immigration to their local terminus. The initial context is an article about Christopher Hitchens, soon to be an American citizen, but the discussion is soon diverted into a debate about what America is.
Posted in User Blogs — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:59pm on Feb. 20, 2006 What to do (a beginning).
By Paul J Cella
The Cartoon Jihad has provoked some valuable discussion, but we are still very far from where we need to be. We are still very far from the kind of discussion that a free republican people, jealous of its liberty, must undertake. We are still very far from satisfactorily discharging our duty of self-government.
The Boston Phoenix now admits that it refused to publish the cartoons not out of respect, but out of fear.
Our primary reason . . . is fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history.
It is all well and good to denounce those who have produced this climate of fear; it is well and good to refer to them as "bloodthirty Islamists," or to invoke, against them, the heroic images of the dissidents of the past, as Jeff Jacoby does. But the question hangs in the tense air like a silent accusation: what are we going to do about them?
This question -- the uncomfortable practical one -- is the very one we must raise amongst ourselves. We must place it before the sovereign, which is the people, acting through their duly-elected representatives. We must raise this question and set ourselves with sagacity and resolve to an open deliberation about it, while we still remain free to do so. I think such a deliberation, unburdened by the sort of ideological shackles that characterize the media discussion, will soon issue in some effective policies.
The first and most obvious sector to strike at is Muslim immigrants, especially those here illegally. Let us draw up legislation emphasizing the priority of deporting illegal Muslim immigrants. I repeat: illegal Muslim immigrants. Let us draw up legislation withholding federal funds from localities that resist this specific application of extant law. Let us draw up further legislation declaring that any Muslim immigrant, here by our forbearance, who so much as breathes a word of jihadist threat against an American, whether on a placard in the streets of New York, or in some screed on the Internet, will be arrested and deported forthwith.
I ask the reader to consider what effect the mere introduction of such legislation in the United States House of Representatives might have. Should we not be thinking about how to turn the climate of fear around a bit? When the seething jihadist, his sensibilities inflamed by a half dozen sensationalized examples of "disrespect," goes to his dirty little apartment with his poster-board and his crayons, let him pause for a moment, recalling the most recent CAIR online alert, and calculate the possibility that taking that colorful placard to the street one morning might, willy-nilly, result in his being put on a plane to Pakistan that afternoon. Let another seething jihadist, preparing to post some wild diatribe on a Islamist website from his comfy workstation at the company office, stop short and ponder whether an agent of the hated infidel lurks out there among his hitherto trusted interlocutors, and whether this post will be the one that earns him a revoked visa and a one-way ticket to Riyadh. Let the jihadists and their sympathizers, isolated in the unseen enclaves throughout our great cities, soak in two or three weeks of media hysteria over that bill introduced by Representative So-and-So, the very New McCarthy himself, which actually cites by name several of the more problematic doctrines of Islam, and declares them anathema to the traditions and liberties of America; which bill, moreover, seems to be somehow gaining support in both houses of Congress.
Is this problem too difficult, too sensitive, too explosive, to be even addressed in the Congress of the United States? To answer Yes is, in strict cold logic, to affirm the death of republican self-government in America.
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