tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post7189607829799807664..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Warriors, Pagans, Jacksonians, and PhariseesAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-6858329016056203942016-01-21T21:30:51.082-05:002016-01-21T21:30:51.082-05:00I had never read "The Inner Ring" before...I had never read "The Inner Ring" before. Thank you.<br /><br />This is an interesting reflection all the way around. I shall have to think about it, and respond when I have done. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-45081346195537859052016-01-20T14:54:37.782-05:002016-01-20T14:54:37.782-05:00Since we're doing Lewis, there's some bit ...Since we're doing Lewis, there's some bit in Screwtape to the effect that one of the Devil's tools is to warn against tendencies that are all but gone in the current culture, thus pushing it further toward the harmful opposite extreme. (I think he talked about doing this with fashions in female beauty.)<br /><br />To apply this to the Jacksonian tendency: in the present day, patriotism is universally suspected. (By patriotism I mean fellow-feeling particularly for one's own countrymen, and the desire to uphold and improve one's country.) Patriotism requires a sense of one's country as distinct from other countries, and the "correct" attitude today is that there is really no such distinction. (I think of John McCain responding to opposition to illegal entry into this country by saying "We're all God's children." - well, yes, John, but that doesn't mean we're all Americans.) It also requires a respect for one's own country, and that too is out of fashion - the idea that America is the worst country in the world, the most dangerous, the most racist, and that generally the world revolves around us whenever something goes wrong, is the accepted conventional wisdom.<br /><br />Jacksonianism is nothing if not patriotic, and so inveighing against the Jacksonian tendency is thus pushing us in precisely the direction where we're already off-balance. That we might become too patriotic is... a potential problem, but is not one of our current problems. We're already so suspicious of patriotism that it is not quite respectable to refer to a policy in terms of its benefits to our country.<br /><br />There's a lot of "those others" in all this, of course - "well, me and my tribe recognize America's flaws, so it's only those people over there who are too patriotic and need their love of country taken down a few pegs" - but it isn't as though you can operate on one part of the culture and not affect everyone else. And we've dealt with the problems with thinking like this in terms of "those other people" before, of course.<br /><br />We can probably go down the list of Jacksonian tendencies - they're pugilistic, but the culture at large is damn near supine; they're ornery and independent-minded, and the culture takes for granted a really remarkable amount of surveillance and micromanagement of people's lives - and find similar things. I am not surprised that the regnant political culture has an allergic reaction to the Jacksonian strain, because it's almost precisely opposed to it.<br /><br />Which of course is why we need that strain.jaedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03328666344764784829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-16936969942748068012016-01-19T23:13:15.388-05:002016-01-19T23:13:15.388-05:00If a man does not love his family, whom he has see...If a man does not love his family, whom he has seen, how can he love mankind, whom he has not? (If I may be pardoned a little rewriting...) If we have first things first we can build farther loves on nearer ones, but if not our farther loves are probably rather fragile and more imaginary than otherwise. <br /><br />If I get the picture correctly (I haven't finished Born Fighting yet), the Jacksonian tribe is strongly family-based, while the Jeffersonian is more ideological.<br /><br />I keep coming back to 1Cor12, though. jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com