“Yes, and I still support abolishing it. Either though you ignored the context that I wrote that in, are vouchers and testing not conservative proposals?”

Depends on what you take the content of conservatism to be, I suppose. If your aim is strictly limited government and a federal republic rather than a national bureaucracy, then no, these aren’t conservative proposals.

Vouchers aren’t the main focus of my concern here—although I will say that they amount to extending government money—and thus, government control—over private schools as well as state schools. There are good arguments to be made on both sides for whether the benefits to school competition still outweigh the costs in increased bureaucratic control and homogenization, but it certainly seems to me that the further away from local communities you place the locus of control (like, say, in the federal Department of Education) the worse it looks.

The “Good God, man,” though, is directed towards the notion that the federal power-grab through mandated “testing” is somehow a conservative notion. What “testing” means is a massive and unprecedented takeover of education by the federal government through Department of Education testing mandates. That is what Bush promised and that is what he delivered. Today the federal education bureaucracy is more powerful, exercises more centralized control over local school districts, and has a budget heading for the roof. You may say John Kerry would be just as bad or worse; fine, but no-one is claiming John Kerry is a conservative.

These are ideas that come from a recognizable Right-wing source—they are straight out of the educational playbook of the Kaiser’s Prussia. But that just goes to show that not all Right-wing ideas are conservative ideas. If you still think that these proposals are a good idea, fine; there are arguments to be made for them. But there are no arguments to be made for describing them as conservative proposals.

arcane said: “In it are great conservative proposals, such as conducting mandatory testing programs to increase school accountability and voucher programs so that lower income families can get their children out of failing public schools.”

Good God, man, since when is a massive federal takeover of the educational system through Department of Ed testing mandates a conservative proposal? Wasn’t it conservatives who were pushing for the Department of Education to be abolished not ten years ago?

Max asks: “And as much as it makes me hurt to think about it, I have a feeling it won’t be smooth or over by the 3rd. When did voting get so complicated? Why haven’t we spent the last 4 years trying to work and make sure we don’t have a repeat of 2000?”

Well. Ask yourself two questions: (1) who most directly benefited from the electoral mess in 2000? and (2) who is in power to put forward or obstruct serious electoral reform now? And there’s the answer to your questions as well.

Cynical? Sure, I’ll cop to that—but cynicism pays when folks like these are running the show.

“I was skeptical simply because it seemed to me that the characteristics of the Russian “personality” were crystallized as early as the reign of Ivan the Terrible (or perhaps Peter the Great), that is, the appeal of autocracy and the strong man.”

People say this about Russia and its history all the time, but I don’t get it at all. Didn’t ordinary Russians rebel against the Czar repeatedly? Didn’t they even sort of contemplate a revolution at some point?

Weren’t most of the repressive measures of Soviet Communism directed against internal opposition to the centralization of the Party during the Civil War and post-Civil War period? Wasn’t there an extensive dissident movement? Didn’t the regime finally collapse internally in the face of such opposition?

Russian history is a terribly sad story, but it seems to me that there are much better explanations for that than blaming the victims or their “national character”…

I’m a bit puzzled by the tack taken by several defenders of philosophy in this thread. For example:

Rikurzhen: “At its best, analytical philosophy relies on falsification, permits empirical solutions, and enjoys a marketplace of ideas.”

Steve: “Philosophy does have a role to play in science.”

Frank: “Philosophy such as his does more, by way of lucid logical processes informed by the current state of scientific knowledge, to discredit theism, or creationism than mere data-crunching. A truly philosophy-averse “scientist” is little more than a technician.”

Steve: “I agree with you to an extent and had outlined some ways I think philosophy is useful.”

It’s not that I necessarily disagree with claims such as these; but I wonder whether they really get at the underlying issue. There may very well be good reasons to think that philosophy is, in some ways, useful to empirical science. But does an intellectual discipline need to be useful to empirical science to be worth pursuing? If so, Jesus, why?

gc: “how can you teach mathematics if you believe that 1 = 1 has the same truth value as 1 = 2?”

I don’t know, but Derrida didn’t believe this or argue for it. Nowhere in Derrida’s writing does he challenge the notion of truth as applied within discursive domains—among them mathematics. What he takes himself to be challenging is an uncritical metaphysical account of what our traffic in truth, plain meanings of words, etc. amounts to. As Derrida himself puts it in Limited Inc.:

“[T]he value of truth … is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. … [W]ithin interpretive contexts … that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competance, criteria of discussion and of consensus. … I take into account and believe that it is necessary to account for this stability [of interpretive contexts], as well as for all the norms, rules, contractual possibilities, that depend upon it. But … to account for a certain stability … is precisely not to speak of eternity or of absolute solidity; it is to take into account a historicity, a nonnaturalness, of ethics, of politics, of institutionality, etc. … I say that there is no stability that is absolute, eternal, intangible, natural, etc. But that is implied in the very concept of stability. A stability is not an immutability; it is by definition always destabilizable.”

Derrida is not a truth-nihilist. There are deep, fundamental problems with his philosophy and his method, but this is not among them. If lit crit popularizers, or unsympathetic critics, have tried to make Derrida into one, that is their problem, not his. For an excellent overview of what Derrida is (and isn’t) doing, and some of the interpretive and philosophical problems involved with reference to contemporary Analytic philosophy, I recommend Martin Stone’s “Wittgenstein on Deconstruction,” anthologized in THE NEW WITTGENSTEIN (eds. Alice Crary and Rupert Read).

Lopez: “I’ll just note here that I have no problem whatsoever with peaceful white seperatism. If someone wants to buy some land, fence it in, and hate homos and Meskins and Negroes, that’s perfectly fine by me. … But that isn’t the Hoppean position either.”

Well. It’s clear enough that peaceful white separatism (by definition, since it it’s stipulated to be peaceful) doesn’t tread on anyone’s rights. So there’s no problem with it whatsoever as far as a libertarian theory of justice is concerned. But although no-one has any right to force people not to form such communities, don’t you think that they are still idiots?

Justice is the only virtue that’s enforceable, but it’s not the only virtue.

Kinsella: Geek, what exactly is your position? Are you saying that one criterion of being “one of the greatest libertarian theorists” is that you can’t espouse any nonlibertarian views? I.e., that you can’t be wrong about anything

I think that there are two basic points being made about Calhoun vis-a-vis the tradition of libertarian thought.

1. The absolute point: to describe Calhoun as a great libertarian thinker (or even a principled advocate of secession) when he vigorously defended slavery as a positive good on the floor of the Senate, and did more than perhaps any other single man to preserve and perpetuate Southern race slavery during the middle decades of the 19th century, is problematic, to say the least. (If you found someone who had eloquently and vigorously defended libertarian views, except that he supported the Holocaust on the grounds that Jews have no human rights, would you call him a great libertarian thinker? If you would, Christ, why?)

2. The relative point: you might respond to the absolute point by claiming that, in spite of Calhoun having played a really rotten role in the defense of Southern race slavery, and taking truly despicable positions on it, he was still a leading light in the context of his time, compared to the other folks who were doing political theory at the time. But that, too, is false. Indeed, it’s ridiculous. To go around celebrating slaver Calhoun’s contribution to the thought of his time, when men such as Lysander Spooner and William Lloyd Garrison were writing political theory—often theory diametrically opposed to Calhoun’s, on libertarian grounds—seems to me to be simply ludicrous.

I think the relative point is obvious. As for the absolute point, I think that you can only bypass it by ignoring how despicable American race slavery really was, and passing it off as if it were simply some niggling error on some minor point is just evasion. What Calhoun supported was an institutionalized assault on human liberty and dignity more systematic, more massive, more prolonged, and more awful, than almost anything else in human history, with the exception of atrocities committed with the explicit purpose of genocide. Saying “Oh, well, he’s a great libertarian except for his defense of Southern slavery” seems to me to be an awful lot like saying “Oh, well, he’s a great Catholic theologian, except that he argues in favor of worshipping the Devil.” Oh well, I guess nobody’s perfect.

Dare I return to the subject? Why, yes, I do!

“DiLorenzo’s claim was not simply that Calhoun put forth a few libertarian-sounding arguments, judged independently of his other beliefs. Rather, it was that Calhoun was one of the greatest libertarian philosophers of his time. Now, I could understand this claim if Calhoun lived at a time where everyone else was a rabid statist who supported slavery. Then it might make sense to say that Calhoun was one of the greatest — i.e. greater than others — libertarians of his time. But there were certainly other people who lived at the same time and did not support slavery.”

Indeed. In fact, here’s some quick dates:

John C. Calhoun: lived 1782 – 1850. Vice President 1824-1832. Served in Senate 1830-1850. Defended slavery as “a positive good” on the floor of the Senate in 1837. Spent his last days fighting for the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.

Lysander Spooner: lived 1808 – 1887. Published [url=http://www.lysanderspooner.org/UnconstitutionalityOfSlaveryContents.htm]The Unconstitutionality of Slavery[/url] in 1845 and [url=http://www.lysanderspooner.org/DefenseOfFugitiveSlaves.htm]A Defence for Fugitive Slaves Against the Acts of Congress[/url] in 1850, in addition to numerous other libertarian writings.

William Lloyd Garrison: lived 1805-1879. Published The Liberator 1831-1865. Defended the Declaration of Independence and denounced the Constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell”. Began to argue for peaceful Northern secession by 1844.

To describe Calhoun as one of the greatest libertarian theorists of his time is, quite frankly, a historical obscenity.

“I do, even though I vehemently oppose such a policy in the U.S. The difference being, of course, that there have been no organized attempts by Mexicans to blow themselves up in heavily populated civilian centers. To my knowledge.”

No, but there have been organized attempts by Mexicans to pick fruits and vegetables, mow lawns, take care of children, and do other important work completely under the table and tax-free. Also to encourage some Americans to learn Spanish. Or at least not actively discourage them and fail them for speaking it better than they speak English. Or something.

I gather that in Paleo Bizarro World, these crimes may not be quite as bad as blowing up civilians, but it’s got to be pretty damn close.