"...a man addicted to the intoxicating thrill of his own righteous indignation, and eager to view politics through its distorting haze."
This phrase sums up my problem with so many thinkers on the right these days. They're full of anger and indignation and so morally certain of their views that they're eager to impose them by any means necessary on the rest of us. They see the politics as an arena to achieve total victory rather than one where reasonable compromise is necessary to sustain the republic. There's no small irony in the fact that the morally indignant right embrace a corrupt, serial liar like Trump and ascribe to an ends justifies the means political philosophy.
Also ironic how many of them claim the mantle of "True Christian" despite using an Ends Justifies The Means approach to politics, which is completely antithetical to Christ's teachings.
They might do well to consider the case of the prophet Jonah…and the potential pleasures of self-righteousness so appealing that its entreaties should be treated as sceptically as those of gluttony or of lust.
Putting Anton, Kristol, and Mansfield together on a single Trump continuum, and using their responses and judgments as a way to illustrate your point about phronesis, is kind of brilliant. Well done, sir.
There is, therefore, such a thing as natural right, but its content changes in different circumstances, and its very rightness often can’t be definitively established at the moment it is articulated. People disagree about who is truly wise. It’s often possible to know only in retrospect, after the consequences have unfolded, whether one course of action or another is right.
Welcome to the world of the pragmatists. Not sure you feel comfortable here, but consequences do matter.
And why on earth did Mansfield vote for Trump in 2020? The character of Trump was not visible by then?
This article is very interesting and informative, for me at least, because I have never read much of Michael Anton's writings, much less studied them, and I was unaware of the natural rights connection to this whole matter, and of Anton's interpretation of that idea. I will add, however, along with another poster here (Judd Kahn) that I am surprised that a person of Harvey Mansfield's stature and knowledge did not realize from the beginning of Trump's presidential bid, all the toxicities of the man. Trump did not come to the presidency as a young man, and already had a long public profile and track record when he made that bid. Anyone interested in politics did not need to wait until January 6, 2020 to know about the man. Shortly after Trump became the Republican candidate for the presidency, I heard a 2016 radio program in which Right-wing pundit Hugh Hewitt was interviewing then-Republican scholar Tom Nichols who, to Hewitt's amazement and annoyance, disavowed Trump, saying (among other things): ,
"...The problem is that I think Donald Trump is a fundamentally unstable person. I don’t think he has policies. I think there’s something genuinely wrong with him. I don’t, I cannot trust, personally, again, speaking for myself, I cannot entrust the Oval Office to somebody that I think has some serious emotional problems, and who does, simply has no interest in policy, does not take the time to learn, and is not just untutored or unschooled in important affairs of state, but he is willfully ignorant. He revels in being ignorant about matters of state. And over the course of the primary, I don’t see that that’s gotten any better. Now to add to that, I also think that Donald Trump has done things that I, in my heart of hearts, I find to be not just things I disagree with, but that are anti-American. I mean, I thought Trump’s campaign would be over when he went after John McCain, which I found shocking. I mean, you can disagree with John McCain, but what Trump did was horrifying, inviting a hostile foreign power to interfere in our election, going after a Gold Star family. One thing after another that would have been an easy disqualification for anybody else, has just been tolerated and tolerated and tolerated. And I just can’t envision, I kind of go with P.J. O’Rourke’s comment that you know, Hillary is awful, but she’s within the normal parameters of awful. Trump is off the charts, and so I have to say that."
(That very interesting interview has a transcript here: https://hughhewitt.com/professor-tom-nichols/ -- and note that even Hewitt, himself, was not initially a Trump fan until he decided to become a Trump lackey for some reason)
So--I wonder how Mansfield missed these points which were already well-known. When we speak of human reason and ever-changing temporal circumstances as conditioners for the application of natural rights, we do have a lot of people with blind sides. Human reason is itself a contested phenomenon and often a sociological problem unto itself.
'Only those believing in Natural Right, and fully agreeing with me in its nature and as to its particulars, can have any valid opinion on whether something were good or bad.'
See:
'You do not believe in the Gold Standard, therefore you can be against neither passing counterfeit money nor theft.'
How many of the natural right folks went to Catholic school and learned about natural law/right at the earliest religion class? I, as a non-Catholic, went to 5 years of a Catholic parish school where this was drummed into us as the first principal. When I talk to others who had that education, it is usually assumed to be the truth from which all else follows even if the Christian ideas are no longer believed.
"...a man addicted to the intoxicating thrill of his own righteous indignation, and eager to view politics through its distorting haze."
This phrase sums up my problem with so many thinkers on the right these days. They're full of anger and indignation and so morally certain of their views that they're eager to impose them by any means necessary on the rest of us. They see the politics as an arena to achieve total victory rather than one where reasonable compromise is necessary to sustain the republic. There's no small irony in the fact that the morally indignant right embrace a corrupt, serial liar like Trump and ascribe to an ends justifies the means political philosophy.
Also ironic how many of them claim the mantle of "True Christian" despite using an Ends Justifies The Means approach to politics, which is completely antithetical to Christ's teachings.
They might do well to consider the case of the prophet Jonah…and the potential pleasures of self-righteousness so appealing that its entreaties should be treated as sceptically as those of gluttony or of lust.
Putting Anton, Kristol, and Mansfield together on a single Trump continuum, and using their responses and judgments as a way to illustrate your point about phronesis, is kind of brilliant. Well done, sir.
I loved this section:
There is, therefore, such a thing as natural right, but its content changes in different circumstances, and its very rightness often can’t be definitively established at the moment it is articulated. People disagree about who is truly wise. It’s often possible to know only in retrospect, after the consequences have unfolded, whether one course of action or another is right.
Welcome to the world of the pragmatists. Not sure you feel comfortable here, but consequences do matter.
And why on earth did Mansfield vote for Trump in 2020? The character of Trump was not visible by then?
I, too, wondered why it took Mansfield so long to see what was long visible to many.
This article is very interesting and informative, for me at least, because I have never read much of Michael Anton's writings, much less studied them, and I was unaware of the natural rights connection to this whole matter, and of Anton's interpretation of that idea. I will add, however, along with another poster here (Judd Kahn) that I am surprised that a person of Harvey Mansfield's stature and knowledge did not realize from the beginning of Trump's presidential bid, all the toxicities of the man. Trump did not come to the presidency as a young man, and already had a long public profile and track record when he made that bid. Anyone interested in politics did not need to wait until January 6, 2020 to know about the man. Shortly after Trump became the Republican candidate for the presidency, I heard a 2016 radio program in which Right-wing pundit Hugh Hewitt was interviewing then-Republican scholar Tom Nichols who, to Hewitt's amazement and annoyance, disavowed Trump, saying (among other things): ,
"...The problem is that I think Donald Trump is a fundamentally unstable person. I don’t think he has policies. I think there’s something genuinely wrong with him. I don’t, I cannot trust, personally, again, speaking for myself, I cannot entrust the Oval Office to somebody that I think has some serious emotional problems, and who does, simply has no interest in policy, does not take the time to learn, and is not just untutored or unschooled in important affairs of state, but he is willfully ignorant. He revels in being ignorant about matters of state. And over the course of the primary, I don’t see that that’s gotten any better. Now to add to that, I also think that Donald Trump has done things that I, in my heart of hearts, I find to be not just things I disagree with, but that are anti-American. I mean, I thought Trump’s campaign would be over when he went after John McCain, which I found shocking. I mean, you can disagree with John McCain, but what Trump did was horrifying, inviting a hostile foreign power to interfere in our election, going after a Gold Star family. One thing after another that would have been an easy disqualification for anybody else, has just been tolerated and tolerated and tolerated. And I just can’t envision, I kind of go with P.J. O’Rourke’s comment that you know, Hillary is awful, but she’s within the normal parameters of awful. Trump is off the charts, and so I have to say that."
(That very interesting interview has a transcript here: https://hughhewitt.com/professor-tom-nichols/ -- and note that even Hewitt, himself, was not initially a Trump fan until he decided to become a Trump lackey for some reason)
So--I wonder how Mansfield missed these points which were already well-known. When we speak of human reason and ever-changing temporal circumstances as conditioners for the application of natural rights, we do have a lot of people with blind sides. Human reason is itself a contested phenomenon and often a sociological problem unto itself.
'Only those believing in Natural Right, and fully agreeing with me in its nature and as to its particulars, can have any valid opinion on whether something were good or bad.'
See:
'You do not believe in the Gold Standard, therefore you can be against neither passing counterfeit money nor theft.'
How many of the natural right folks went to Catholic school and learned about natural law/right at the earliest religion class? I, as a non-Catholic, went to 5 years of a Catholic parish school where this was drummed into us as the first principal. When I talk to others who had that education, it is usually assumed to be the truth from which all else follows even if the Christian ideas are no longer believed.