I hate to over Sobranise you…

Posted by Guessedworker on November 29, 2006, 06:48 AM | #

Sobran is what now?  A Roman Catholic anarchist?

In any event, he fails to make the rather significant point that liberalism eschews heritability since it must at all costs cleave to the perfectability of Man.  This puts the eponymous liberal in a nasty bind.  His Darwinism for the purposes of bashing the Church goes hand in hand with his anti-Darwinism for the purposes of bashing Western Man.  Ouch!

The common thread, of course, and what it is all about, is the requirement to knock down the estates of Faith and Blood.  Whether there is any more purpose to this than personal malignity and the desire to replace the old elites of Faith and Blood with liberalism’s priesthood is rather doubtful.  It does all look very like a revolutionary vehicle at the level of elites, though.

Desmond made a good point about this on a thread this last summer, concluding that liberalism was a Darwinian strategy of the new elites, no less.  We kicked it around a bit here, and got a lot closer to the heart of the matter than Joe Sobran does.

Posted by Melba Peachtoast on November 29, 2006, 01:12 PM | #

William jennings Bryan is very popular in the Peachtoast household. Greatuncle Wilbert Peachtoast made a pilgrimage to his deathbed (as it turned out) and went to the end of his own life a champion of Free Silver!

Posted by James O'Meara on November 29, 2006, 01:13 PM | #

Oddly enough, just last night I was wasting time in a bookstore and noticed a new, paperback of Mencken’s trial reporting, no doubt to cash in on the recent hubbub.

I haven’t seen the film for years, but I recall that Mencken is played by Gene Kelly (!) and, at the end, “gets his come-uppance” as the folks would say in The Magnificent Ambersons, when Spencer Tracy (as Darrow) gives him a dressing down as a smug, heartless, know-it-all not worthy of buttoning Bryan’s shoes.  So I don’t think it’s (intended) to necessarily be a “horray for liberalism” plot, but something more complicated and thus tragic.

The defense attorney in the film version of The Caine Mutiny does the same thing; was this a common, cover-our-ass feature of Hollywood in the 50s?

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on November 29, 2006, 04:32 PM | #

Desmond made a good point about this on a thread this last summer, concluding that liberalism was a Darwinian strategy of the new elites, no less.  We kicked it around a bit here, and got a lot closer to the heart of the matter than Joe Sobran does.

I don’t remember that discussion, but I do remember thinking something along these lines early on in my awakening, when reading about Bolshevism; the whole thing struck me as not much more than a way to replace the old elite with a new one.  I wasn’t thinking “Darwinian,” though, just ingroups.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on November 29, 2006, 09:46 PM | #

Also, Joe touches on something that is central to liberalism, the narrative that puts evil on the other side and goodness on its own.  It’s the core of liberalism, really, but it doesn’t bear much discussion because it’s not complex or subtle or profound - it’s just a symptom of liberalism’s nature as the establishment, the message pulsing out from God (the media) to the ants.

That makes it easy to forget.  I remember a discussion with a liberal activist type when I was a teenager.  After I had soundly thrashed her on point after point (I remember abortion and animal testing), as much for Devil’s advocate purposes as anything else, she became upset and declared there was no point to talking with me any more.  When I asked why, and basically stated if you got it, bring it already, she replied, “why?  It’s obvious that I’m far more open-minded than you!”  It was hilarious because from the context of our conversation it was obvious that she attached open-mindedness to liberalism, closed-mindedness to conservatism, and that was that; it mattered not at all to her that I had shown far more mental flexibility than she, and that I was actually open to having my mind changed (but she didn’t have the tools to do so).  After all, I was playing Devil’s advocate, while she was arguing the scripture of her Faith.

Posted by who on November 30, 2006, 09:00 AM | #

We all know who is at fault—it’s the Jews

Posted by Lurker on November 30, 2006, 09:16 AM | #

Troll alert!

Posted by alex zeka on November 30, 2006, 10:11 AM | #

We all know who is at fault—it’s the Jews

Sobran, a pacifist anarchist with no piety for the nationstate and with great piety for the universal Catholic Church, certainly thinks so.

Posted by Retew on December 01, 2006, 05:37 AM | #

Joe Sobran

Alex, I don’t think he’s an anarchist so much as an extreme small government paleoconservative. I’ve never seen him say anything against the Constitution as it was originally intended.

He’s not a pacifist either as he supports war when the US is attacked, he simply doesn’t support the US meddling militarily or otherwise in the affairs of other countries. He also believes that the thread posed by Al Qaeda has been greatly exaggerated.

Posted by ben tillman on December 01, 2006, 11:10 AM | #

No one’s really an anarchist.  The issue is always self-government versus other-government, i.e., whether morality extends beyond the single human to create a moral *community*.

Posted by rustymason on December 01, 2006, 12:05 PM | #

Ben, you are a man not only of erudition but also of (un)common sense.  Please post more often.

Posted by Alex Zeka on December 01, 2006, 07:15 PM | #

Retew, I was simply using a language that who would understand: the mainstream one in which small gov’t=anarchist and no agression=pacifism.

Btw, he does have something to say against all gov’t: ‘For me this is anything but a happy conclusion. I miss the serenity of believing I lived under a good government, wisely designed and benevolent in its operation. But, as St. Paul says, there comes a time to put away childish things. ‘

Source: http://www.sobran.com/reluctant.shtml

Posted by Lurker on December 02, 2006, 11:31 AM | #

No one’s really a libertarian either, I find, maybe thats just the lightweights I meet though.