Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.[1]
Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed A.P.
Martinich (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press), p. 97 (Ch. XIII).
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Hobbes on Trump’s debating ‘style’ and tax records –a tweet
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Hobbes on Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat
So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to assuring it at home by laws or abroad by wars; and themselves are inclined to rash engaging, and in the approach of danger or difficulty to retire if they can, because not seeing the way of safety they will rather hazard their honour, for which may be salved with an excuse than their lives, for which no salve is sufficient.[1]
Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed., A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press,
2002), pp.75, 76. (Chapter XI).
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Trump and the Enlightenment: the consistency of an “illawgical” mind - a snapshot
Thanks to the Scientific Revolution and Newton in particular, we have laws of nature as understood by science: gravity is universal. Newton’s considerable impact on the Enlightenment is undeniable, and Voltaire, a main torchbearer in France, was in England at the time of Newton’s funeral, whose passing was a national event, buried as he was inside Westminster Abbey. From the laws of nature and Newton’s clockwork universe, laws of society and those governing man – regarded as rational and self-determining - were inferred. The concept of progress was also developed during the Enlightenment from Bacon and Descartes’ earlier notion of man who was seen as having power over nature and as having the ability to shape his environment.
Even the nature of law itself was wedded to science and based on reason. We find it in Montesquieu, who writes near the beginning of The Spirit of the Laws (1748): “Law in general is human reason insofar as it governs all the peoples of the earth; and the political and civil laws of each nation should be only the particular cases to which reason is applied.”[1] Reasonable law is, of course, not arbitrary, but written and for all to see, hence the rise of the idea of constitutions.
An early instance of experimenting with written constitutional laws occurred at the middle of the 17th century – also the height of the Scientific Revolution, at least judging from Hobbes’ work on the mechanics of English politics post-Charles I as expressed in Leviathan (1651) - during Cromwell’s ill-fated Protectorate. This was a brief deviation from the much longer English tradition of an unwritten Constitution. The American Declaration of Independence (1776), with its Lockean objection to “a long train of abuses” as observed prior to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, is a document also inspired by the Interregnum of the English Civil Wars, yet an Enlightenment product, as well.[2] Similarly, the U.S. Constitution (1789), with its “separation of powers”, its framing of American self-governance, and supreme legal authority is an expression of Enlightenment reasoning.
However, with Trump we see the rise of the Anti-Enlightenment: racism, xenophobia, nationalism, populism, prejudice, abuses of power, and, of course, pronounced anti-science rhetoric made more evident by his appalling mishandling of the Coronavirus. The Revolutionary “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” of 1789, although French, was addressed to “man” – a quintessential Enlightenment notion, much like the Paris Climate Accord (2016) which speaks to the future of mankind. Any informed individual knows that Trump’s denial of climate change is anti-science and not based on the evidence or sound reasoning. But what we also need to realize is that his attacks on the American Constitution, his defence of a 17—year-old alleged killer of two Black Lives Matter protesters, and his chronic abuse of law in general – is, in effect, profoundly anti-scientific. With respect to this impeached President’s stance on “law”, Trump mind - from the perspective of Enlightenment reasoning - is wholly non-science, or rather nonsense, and consistently anti-scientific.
[1] Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. and tr. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller and
Harold Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 8. (Book I, Ch.
3).
[2] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 415. Second
Treatise, para. 225. See also Carl Lotus
Backer, The Declaration of Independence:
A Study in the History of Political Ideas (Bolton, ON: Amazon, 2017 [First
published by Harcourt, Bruce and Company in 1922.]), p. 98. Becker points out
that “The complete works of both Locke and Newton were at the Harvard library
at least as early as 1773. Locke’s works
were listed in the Princeton catalogue of 1760. As early as 1755 the Yale
library contained the works of Locke, Newton, and Descartes, besides two
popular expositions of the Newtonian philosophy.” (p. 42).
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Coquitlam’s Confucius Institute in light of Covid-19
School Trustees in SD43 missed their annual trip to China this past spring, and likely they will remain home again next year – one minor consequence of the virus originating from and mishandled in Wuhan. And as the entire globe grapples with Covid-19, President Xi has galvanized Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ambitions – over Hong Kong, the Himalayas, Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, Mongolia, the South China Sea, and, of course, democratically-elected Taiwan, the so-called “renegade” province. What sort of government is this in China, where one man rules over its only party without limits? Are not the new Emperor’s boundless aspirations rather self-evident?
Aside from
the many overt geopolitical ventures, Xi persists in “hostage diplomacy”, the
latest victim being Chinese-born Australian news anchor, Cheng Lei. Hostage diplomacy is essentially an ugly
Communist habit picked up from Stalin, who held a number of hostages in his
time, including Chiang Kai-Shek’s only son, which gave the Soviet-supported CCP
leverage as the they and the Nationalists (and Japanese) fought over control of
China in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
According to Jung Chang and John Halliday’s book, Mao: The Untold Story, Mao’s famous “long march” was saved precisely
because of Stalin’s hostage diplomacy.[1]
It was also used during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Today Xi is copying from Mao.
Meanwhile,
in sleepy Coquitlam BC, our “public” school board maintains a Confucius Institute,
not at all far removed from the autocratic reach of the CCP itself, in the
hopes that it will lure “business” in the name of overseas students thus adding
to its coffers, since depleted because of Covid-19. I am sure Chinese students
will always want to come to Canada, not only for the fresh air, but also for a
bit of breathing space, as Xi clamps down on even freedom of thought, where
nothing within its grasp is deemed independent of the CCP. But closing the Confucius Institute requires
principle. No school district should
have one – or rely on the income from overseas students. It’s a stand SD43 seems unwilling to take, owing
to its sorry addiction to the cash nexus, induced by BC government chronic
underfunding of education. History will not take too kindly to this Canadian yearning
for the yuan.
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Sir John A. MacDonald decolonized and decapitated - a tweet
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