{"id":105892,"date":"2016-09-08T00:27:13","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T08:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=105892"},"modified":"2016-09-08T17:50:04","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T01:50:04","slug":"the-flight-93-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=105892","title":{"rendered":"The Flight 93 Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comments at Steve Sailer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* Whoever wrote this is a regular reader here. He name checks Ben Franklin, Invade\/Invite, importing ringers, noblesse oblige etc. Shame he did not extend the courtesy to name the devil. Also a shame to not explicitly name whites. Only \u201cwhite privelege\u201d. It is a modern idiocy to think that culture is malleable across large ethnic gaps. And a conservative idiocy of the Washington General type.<\/p>\n

* Decius: I tried to name Steve but the editors were \u2026 well, they \u2026 well I\u2019ll stop there.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I don\u2019t want anyone to think I am stealing furtively. I know where these things come from and I am willing to give credit where credit is due.<\/p>\n

In a prior article (now deleted), I referred to Steve as \u201cperhaps the closest thing the blogosphere has to a political philosopher.\u201d I will leave to readers to unpack the various layers of irony in that comment. But one genuine intellectual historian objected and said so. Steve has no such training, and so on.<\/p>\n

[To the extent that the philosopher undermines belief in that common opinion, he undermines the basis of society. He also, not incidentally, puts himself in danger, as the fate of Socrates shows. Steve Sailer, perhaps the closest thing the blogosphere has to a political philosopher, enjoys pointing out the error at the heart of the \u201cEmperor\u2019s New Clothes\u201d parable. In real life, the little child\u2014whom we may analogize to the philosopher\u2014would be torn limb from limb for exposing everyone\u2019s ignorance.]<\/p>\n

To be sure.<\/p>\n

My comment was meant in jest, but only partly. I think Steve\u2019s grasp of political theory is weaker than my own. However, a long time ago, we got into an argument about political theory and despite my book-learnin\u2019, I lost. He was right and I was wrong. It took me a long time to understand that but eventually I did.<\/p>\n

I also came to understand (or think I did; \u201call knowledge is provisional\u201d) that Steve\u2019s understanding is truer to the great thinkers I studied and cherish than my own had been. The larger question of the relation of the universal to the particular still looms (for me) but Steve has been a big help.<\/p>\n

While Steve is not a political philosopher in any overt or obvious sense, he is one in the most decisive sense. He thinks about political life directly, not through the filer of any preconceived theory. Which is what Plato and Aristotle did. Plus, with maybe five exceptions, Steve is better than all those who are formally classified as political philosophers in our time.<\/p>\n

* “Trump is the most liberal Republican nominee since Thomas Dewey.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve seen this point being made. He is the most anti-war Republican candidate in decades, and his concern about the displacement of American blue-collar jobs is something traditionally associated with liberals. His policies are everything liberals claim to believe in \u2013 apart from their desire for unlimited immigration.<\/p>\n

* Decius very generously acknowledges Sailer\u2019s talent as a political thinker.<\/p>\n

Note that Steve also has great instincts as a rhetorician! Must be the background in marketing. He immediately spotted the passage that should have come at the end of the essay, and put it at the end of his excerpt:<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is very, very potent stuff. It cannot be followed by another twelve paragraphs of thoughtful analysis without dissipating the animal spirits that have been summoned up. The speech has to end there \u2013 except for the wild cheering that follows.<\/p>\n

Stephen Miller, just in case you\u2019re listening: you should bring Decius on board as a speech-writer, with Steve Sailer as his editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comments at Steve Sailer: * Whoever wrote this is a regular reader here. He name checks Ben Franklin, Invade\/Invite, importing ringers, noblesse oblige etc. Shame he did not extend the courtesy to name the devil. Also a shame to not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105892"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105974,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105892\/revisions\/105974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}