Re: The 9/11 hijackers were nothing if not committed.
Yup. Moral errors usually come in pairs, and every evil, including modern postmodernist nihilism, eventually begets its opposite evil, the same ways as the excesses of those who denied Christ’s Unity led to the excesses of those who denied His duality. As Simone Weil said, the human spirit is made for sacrifice, and if late-capitalist civilisation impossible for people to sacrifice their lives for good things, then they will turn to Fascism or Bolshevism for want of anything else to give themselves. In our own day, we can update that they will turn to Jihadism instead.
As Western capitalism and liberalism continue to undermine solidarity, tradition, and communitarianism throughout the world, we can expect more and more Al Qaedas to come out of the woodwork.

This is not just an American issue. Think of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) cutting themselves off from Community in search of a sort of freedom. Think of the great hermits and anchorites over the centuries– of St Hermann of Alaska (since this is the day we honor the saints of North America) leaving his past behind and journeying to a far and frozen land.

As in if you take anything to it’s extreme it will implode?

“Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.”
Lord Acton
Steve

“What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity — for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?”
- Antoine de St. Exupery

Actually, the film took quite a swipe at the commune. The dirt-farming hippies naively sowing seeds by hand were headed for destitution. I read that Fonda regretted the inclusion of his stupid line that “These people are gonna be all right.”

“Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well.”
This sounds as if it were written by an advertising executive. A man is not free until he can figure out for himself whether he is thirsty or not.

As Simone Weil said, the human spirit is made for sacrifice, and if late-capitalist civilisation impossible for people to sacrifice their lives for good things, then they will turn to Fascism or Bolshevism for want of anything else to give themselves.
I don’t know who this “They” you speak of are, but leave me out of it.
B*gger that for a game of soldiers, as Terry Pratchett had Rincewind say.
There was a scene in Interesting Times, I think it was, in which a group of young children were being used as pawns in a Chinese-empire-analogue revolution. They were inspired by a Noble Cause and Rincewind quite rightly pointed out that you can find Causes for two-a-penny on any street corner and that the most sensible thing anyone could do is to live a happy, comfortable life without going out of ones way to go die for anyone else’s cause.
I couldn’t find the exact quote of that passage, but here is a related one from the same scene:
“I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It’s never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting “Forward, brave comrades!” you’ll see he’s the one behind the bloody big rock and the one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!”
There is one thing I’d be willing to sacrifice myself for and that is my wife. Anything else, no thank you very much.
With that one stated exception, my human spirit is made for securing a safe, comfortable existence for her and me. One with a roof over our heads, a larder full of food, and clean running heated water.
And I am thankful that I was born into a late-capitalist civilization that has made it possible for me to live that way.
The mass of people would rather turn to Fascism or Bolshevism, or Jihadism?
I strongly disagree with that claim. My bet would be that the vast, vast majority of people would much rather enjoy the bourgeoisie comforts of a warm home, plentiful food and clean water than sacrifice themselves for the aforementioned ‘-isms’.
The problem is when the small minority who find those sorts of ‘-isms’ attractive and would sacrifice themselves – or more typically sacrifice the lives of others – to those sorts of ‘-isms’ gain political power and make life unpleasant for the rest of us who want nothing more than a warm bed and a good breakfast.
Away with all of those who so greatly require transcendent meaning to their lives that they would disturb the comfort of the rest of us. We’ve seen the results of that and are no longer impressed with claims that our spirits are made for sacrifice.
Nope, not gonna do it. All of those folks of “solidarity, tradition, and communitarianism throughout the world” who are discomforted by late-capitalist burdens like clean water and our view of human rights might want to consider giving it a try for a generation or two – I’m willing to bet that they will find it pretty darned satisfactory, all things considered.

Bosh and balderdash.
Acton had it backwards, which is only to be expected given his period and background. Liberty really is doing what you want, not what some titled baboon or editorialist or pompous, wordy hypocrite pretending to be a farmer thinks you ought. This notion of something greater is pure brumagem. Who is to determine what is “greater?” And why the hell would anyone be so foolish as to listen to him? Such people only serve to find means to get everyone else either killed or poor or both, always for the good of their problematic souls or some bizarre notion of “civilization.” And they are deservedly ignored.
The genius of our time, its true saving grace and that which the future will bless us for, is the realization that nothing outside the self and its desires really is of any value, nor can it possibly be of any value. There is, in the end, no higher goal, no goal at all. Civilization and culture are nothing more than useful tools for individuals to enjoy their lives. External to the individuals who make them up they are no value.

“Hear, hear!” Charles Cosimano – again I say “hear, hear!”

I don’t see why we have to have a one-size-fits-all attitude. Why can’t a society have a healthy mix of rooted and rootless people? We don’t demand that everybody be top-notch at mathematics, or with languages. Some are good mathematicians, yet are hopeless with foreign languages (and sometimes even English). We benefit from their contribution to society. Similarly for language-adept but mathematically illiterate folks.
I think any society that’s all Rod-approved “rooted conservative value types” or Rod-disapproved “free riders”, would be unhealthy. But we can have a productive mix of the two.

The freedom worth having is creative freedom. I don’t think any rule about how the latter is obtained holds up.
As for Easy Rider, I don’t think that line of interpretation holds. It’s a tragedy, after all. That square conventional life represented by the rancher is a priori unavailable to the protagonists and they know it.

“The point here is a paradoxical one: that true liberty can only be realized by people who root themselves in limits and loyalties that constrain choice”
I’d have an easier time accepting this principle if ONE, just one, of the people endlessly spouting it had actually conformed their life it in a meaningful way. If even one of the crunchy cons or front porchers had made some sort of significant sacrifice in accordance with their vaunted “limits and place” philosphy, I’d be able to at least credit this notion as being sincerely held. But it doesn’t even pass the smell test. I look at you all and I still see writers and academics moving from city to city across this wonderful land, and not one of you has the strength of conviction to pick up a damn shovel and do the hard work you claim everyone else should be doing, lest ruin and destruction rain down upon all.
When Patrick Deneen is up at 4:30 in the morning to milk cows or plow a field on the same land his father farmed, he can talk to me about my obligations to place and the freedom of limits. But until then, as the kids say, he can STFU. If he doesn’t believe it enough to live by it, why should anyone else?

Very perceptive. One of my main objections to free-market libertarianism and social democracy as political systems is that both are essentially parasitic on institutions, practices and traditions to which they are ideologically hostile.

Unimpressed:
If you can find me a single person with a substantial personal or political credo who lives in total accordance with it, I would be very surprised. The fact that people aren’t perfect and find it hard to live up to their ideals does not mean that those ideals are worthless. That’s logic 101.
PS $50 says you haven’t actually read Rod’s book.

Re: Liberty really is doing what you want
I’m not sure that works either. A meth addict may be doing what he wants (smoking more meth), but in no sense can I conceive he is “free”.
There’s a golden mean here somewhere where true freedom lies– not in being enslaved to the whims of others, but also not being enslaved to one’s one whims.

Easy Rider is a bit before my time. I’ve only seen parts of it. I’ll be sure to watch the entire movie soon.
I’d like to comment on Rod’s interpretation. An idealistic portrayal of any life inevitably confronts the Other. Some persons simply embody that which many cannot (or will not) say and explain. The presence of the unacceptable Other persists even during belief in an absolute morality. The gay person stands at the periphery of the idealized family. He or she provides definition to that unit so long as his or her presence is unspoken and even covered in euphemism. The annunciation of presence, even in the absence of sexual expression, threatens the imagined stability of the family unit. Similarly, I gather that the protagonists of Easy Rider embodied rolling catalysts that disturbed the false tranquility of previously unexamined social situations.
A Christian, or “moral” life, must admit that the fruits of the Edenic tree encompass a wide breadth of failings. Even a “secular life” (whatever that is) admits a diversity of human expression. Either way, no person resides outside the vision of either worldview.

Cultural Conservative? , I’d point back at my above Terry Pratchett quote.
The guys bemoaning the fact that no one puts down roots anymore to build strong ties in their communities and lead simple lives all too often seem to be the same sorts of folks that spent their formative years traveling the globe for reasons furthering their educations, careers, and general life experiences.
It isn’t so much that they don’t live in total accordance with their philosophies, it is that they don’t live very much at all in accordance with them.

Liberty really is doing what you want.
Ah, but first one needs to discipline one’s desires so that what one wants is what is best for oneself.
See Jon’s comment on the meth addict, who is certainly doing “what he wants.”
Again, (a different source this time), “The freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to act as he must.” — Michael Polanyi
Or, to paraphrase a number of the ancient pagans, including Epicurus, freedom is the liberty to do what is in accord with sound reason and virtue.
Captcha: “Thirds to”. When is that beatnik Captcha poetry recital going to be?

I don’t know if the Doctor Who episode Amy’s Choice has aired in the States yet, but it does show that stories about the choice between rootedness and the open road (or universe, as the case may be) needn’t be confined to the western genre.
Captcha: Hussein bailout

One problem with defining liberty as the ability to ‘do what we want’ is that at any given moment we want many different things, which are often incompatible with each other. None of us is a perfectly unified, cohesive person: all of us are torn by conflicting desires, and most importantly, between our carnal and our spiritual nature. To create a society in which it’s easier to satisfy one side of our nature, is simultaneousley to create a society in which it’s harder to satisfy the other.
From George Orwell, “The Road to Wigan Pier”….
“Now this in a sense is true. It amounts to saying, ‘We’re soft—for God’s sake let’s stay soft!’ which at least is realistic. As I have pointed out already, the machine has got us in its grip and to escape will be immensely difficult. Nevertheless this answer is really an evasion, because it fails to make dear what we mean when we say that we ‘want’ this or that. I am a degenerate modern semi-intellectual who would die if I did not get my early morning cup of tea and my New Statesman every Friday. Clearly I do not, in a sense, ‘want’ to return to a simpler, harder, probably agricultural way of life. In the same sense I don’t ‘want’ to cut down my drinking, to pay my debts, to take enough exercise, to be faithful to my wife, etc., etc. But in another and more permanent sense I do want these things, and perhaps in the same sense I want a civilization in which ‘progress’ is not definable as making the world safe for little fat men.”

Charles Cosimano: The genius of our time, its true saving grace and that which the future will bless us for, is the realization that nothing outside the self and its desires really is of any value, nor can it possibly be of any value. (emphasis added)
Of course, the problem here is if the self’s desires are drug addiction, murder, torture, or what have you. If you want to live in a “late-capitalist civilization that has made it possible for” us to have “warm beds and good breakfasts”, as John E. says, then some people better be kept from seeking the desires of the self. In fact, if we want to have a society that is capable of giving us a relatively safe and comfortable life, then to a certain extent, the value of the overall good of society must, from a functional perespective, at least, if not metaphysical, trump the values of the “self and its desires”.
All of this would be standard in utilitarian ethics, which is not usually theistic and is generally non-ideological. Though I’m not utiiitarian for reasons too long to go into, utilitarianism does have some valid insights, among which is that the good or freedom of the individual is not an unlimited or absolute criterion. Extreme libertarians wouild take issue with this, but they have yet to demonstrate their case, and given human nature, I doubt they ever will.
I might point out in closing that the great utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mills, no believer, ideologue, or communitarian, nevertheless recognized that mere physical comforat and security isn’t the highest human good when he made his famous comment that it’s better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, or Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. He adds the immmortal barb, ” And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”

It isn’t so much that they don’t live in total accordance with their philosophies, it is that they don’t live very much at all in accordance with them.
Let me hasten to add that I don’t think they are bad people for living this way. Rod, for example, often acknowledges the gap between his ideals and his actions.

Ugh! Sorry for the typos and getting Mill’s name as “Mills” rather than “Mill”! That’s what happens when you post too fast without spelll-checking!

…then some people better be kept from seeking the desires of the self. In fact, if we want to have a society that is capable of giving us a relatively safe and comfortable life, then to a certain extent, the value of the overall good of society must, from a functional perespective, at least, if not metaphysical, trump the values of the “self and its desires”.
Yes indeed, and I think I’ve argued for this at some length in the various Nietzsche posts.

Charles Cosimano identifies the true belief of our time, and of his understanding of the universe:
“The genius of our time, its true saving grace and that which the future will bless us for, is the realization that nothing outside the self and its desires really is of any value, nor can it possibly be of any value.”
Yet it seems more and more likely both on financial and environmental terms that the future will emphatically NOT bless this generation of boomers; that the generations of this future in fact might curse us.
Furthermore, what exactly does it mean to “bless” someone in your world, Charles? How does one bless in a world where the desiring and atomistic self is the be all and end all, the telos of human civilization? Unless there is something beyond, how can one bless? And once one believes there is something beyond, how can this desiring self be the yardstick of the universe?
Your position–this position–is incoherent. It wants to hold up something as an absolute truth, even while denying the possibility that any absolute truth exists, and therefore falls into the same hole that all forms of epistemological relativism fall into.

Agreed, John. I thought that the way Charles expressed it was very poor. The coda to his post, “Civilization and culture are nothing more than useful tools for individuals to enjoy their lives. External to the individuals who make them up they are no value,” helps a little, since there’s some recognition that civilization and culture are necessary for “individuals to enjoy their lives”, but this is still rather weak. It smacks of Lady Thatcher’s statement that there’ no such thing as “society”, just individual men and women, and families. As a math person, I have to criticize that just on the basis of complex systems and emergent properties. Such a view might be true of a hunter-gatherer tribe, but not a complex modern civiliation.
This trope is common in libertarian thought, and I find it deeply troubling and deeply wrong, both conceptually (as I just discussed) and in that it tends towards a dog-eat-dog, “I got mine”, “too damn bad if you’re on the losing end of the system” ethos. I’m not saying you have such an ethos, or Charels either, for that matter, but it’s a slippery slope.
As an undergraduate I read Freud’s Civiliation and Its Discontents. Though short, it seems about five times longer than it is, since it’s a boring as hell. Moreover, Freud’s armchair anthropology is stupid and dated (and hard to keep a straight face while reading!). Still, I have to give him credit for nailing the problem of civilized man. To live the life we want, one that is not the Hobbsean “nasty, brutish, and short”, we must have civiliation. To this extent, Charles is right that civilization “allows individual to enjoy their lives”. However, the very process that allows this at the same time imposes restraints on us that our hunter-gatherer forebears never had to worry about. Thus, while we are content (higher standard of living and such) we are also discontent because civilization frustrates us. The very instrument of the one is also the instrument of the other, and there is never a perfect solution.
Thus, to say that civilization and culture exist only so individuals can enjoy themselves more is first blithe, simplistic, and flip; and second, a privilege that only middle-class First World citizens have the luxury of even taking. It’s also problematic in that by itself it gives no real moral reason to help the less fortunate, donate to charity, etc. (if it’s only about individuals enjoying their own lives more, what do others’ problems have to do with me?). I’m not saying I have easy answers; just that the questions are knottier than they might seem.

I would say that the overall good of society is an accident. It is not that murder is wrong. It is that you cannot have an economy if everyone is too busy killing each other. So people make functional agreements to keep things running smoothly. But those agreements only work if they are in the interests of individuals to maintain them. That is a long jump away for some weird metaphysical concept of civilization that everyone must subordinate their entire being to.
Liberty, in the end, is being able to tell anyone who comes up with an ought without a real good compelling reason, to go stuff it.

Agreed, John. I thought that the way Charles expressed it was very poor. The coda to his post, “Civilization and culture are nothing more than useful tools for individuals to enjoy their lives. External to the individuals who make them up they are no value,” helps a little, since there’s some recognition that civilization and culture are necessary for “individuals to enjoy their lives”, but this is still rather weak.
I suspect that Our Charles is less curmudgeonly in real life than he puts forth in his posts.
…tends towards a dog-eat-dog, “I got mine”, “too damn bad if you’re on the losing end of the system” ethos. I’m not saying you have such an ethos, or Charels either, for that matter, but it’s a slippery slope.
Well, I will admit that it is probably a good thing that we as a society have delegated to the government the duty of redistributing money from those that have it to those that need it. I am not at all confident that if my tax dollars for those purposes were not extracted from me involuntarily that I would voluntarily contribute an equivalent amount for those purposes.
Thus, while we are content (higher standard of living and such) we are also discontent because civilization frustrates us. The very instrument of the one is also the instrument of the other, and there is never a perfect solution.
I had the benefit (and I am sure that the net benefit was towards me) of serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa in the late 80′s and got a very close look at the sort of lives people live who do not enjoy the benefits of our higher standard of living.
I strongly believe that if more of those who are discontent in our late-capitalist system had similar experiences, then they would not have nearly so many Romantic fancies about the simple communal lives of those who do not live in the West.
It’s also problematic in that by itself it gives no real moral reason to help the less fortunate, donate to charity, etc. (if it’s only about individuals enjoying their own lives more, what do others’ problems have to do with me?).
There are pragmatic reasons – at the very least, fewer dead bodies in the streets make for a more hygienic environment.

Charles Cosimano: It is not that murder is wrong….
I’d respectfully point out that most people, even non-believers, would disagree with you on this.
So people make functional agreements to keep things running smoothly. But those agreements only work if they are in the interests of individuals to maintain them.
In a hunter-gatherer tribe, or an Amish village, the technology is low enough, the society is simple enough, and the number of people involved small enough, that this model actually works. Conan knows that if he kills Amra, Amra’s kin will kill him. Jebediah understands that it’s not in his intrest to plow over onto Ezekiel’s plot, unless he wants Ezekiel to take him before the elders.
Research, has in fact indicated that the human brain is wired for optimal functioning in social groups no bigger than about one hundred fifty individuals (see Freakonomics for an extended discussion of this). Therein lies the problem.
Unless one wants to live as a hunter-gatherer among the !Kung or whoever, or want to go Amish (and I assume, Charles, that you want to do neither), one is stuck in a society of millions with a level of organization far, far beyond what we evolved for. Moreover, as L. Sprague DeCamp pointed out, with each arthimetic level of increase in people in an organization, the interrelations (channels of communication) increase exponentially. Thus, you get emergent properties–things that aren’t true of the individuals taken separately or as a group are true of the overall organization taken as a unit. To deny or ignore this tends to lead to very umpleasant results.
If you still don’t believe me, google “complexity theory” or “game theory”, and also read the excellent chapter “The Quantum Congressman” in the excellent book Archimedes’ Revenge, by Paul Hoffman.
This is what I take issue with–the rhetorical equating of tribal interaction methods with those of a complex, technological society. Whether we like it or not, society/civilization/culture is not just the sum of what a bunch of people are doing at the time. That would be like saying that a computer is just a bunch of wires and silicon, so that if I buy a bunch of wires at the hardware store and randomly wire them together and stick them into (silicon-based) Silly Putty, I’m gonna get a Cray supercomputer!

John E.: I strongly believe that if more of those who are discontent in our late-capitalist system had similar experiences, then they would not have nearly so many Romantic fancies about the simple communal lives of those who do not live in the West.
I’ve not gone to the Third World, but growing up in Appalachia I got to see some close analogues, and I’m in total agreement with you here. In addition, any kind of true societal collapse (not just impoverishment or stagnation, I mean real collapse) would probably result in tens or even hundreds of millions of deaths (we couldn’t support 300 million+ with subsistence farming!), so we really have a stake in at least some version of modern society surviving.
There are pragmatic reasons – at the very least, fewer dead bodies in the streets make for a more hygienic environment.
The problem is people don’t act without emotion from purely pragmatic reasons. In fact some would be quite fine with bodies in the streets as long as it wasn’t the streets in their neighborhood, or as long as crews came out regularly to haul the corpses off (Ebenezer Scrooge springs to mind–”they’s better die and decrease the surplus propulation!”). I’m with what MH said a few posts back. Our emotions, rather than being annoyances that cloud our reason, actually evolved as a survival mechanism. Pity, sympathy, and empathy motivate us to help the less fortunate (or for others to help us when we’re the unfortunate ones!) far more often and more effectively than cold, utilitarian calculations. I doubt you joined the Peace Corps for purely pragmatic reasons!

I doubt you joined the Peace Corps for purely pragmatic reasons!
A hit, a palpable hit!

While we’re quoting appropriate song lyrics, here’s the Beatles and Harry Chapin:
“Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to go.
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go.
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go!
One sweet dream:
Pick up the bags and get in the limousine.
Soon we’ll be away from here,
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away.”
“Sometimes I get this crazy dream that I just take off in my car. But you can travel on ten thousand miles and still stay where you are.”

There’s a balance here. On the one hand, staying, committing, building up and growing and growing up are very good. On the other hand, somebody has to go, in all generations and across time and cultures. It is something built into our very nature. The reasons for going are sometimes pragmatic – it stopped raining and we need to move to water. Our rivals are encroaching on our areas, and we’d encounter them less if we relocated over the ridge.
But how often is the reason a prophecy or a strange night vision or the sighting of some distant new star? This wandering is deep-rooted and it’s as much a part of our spiritual heritage as the ideal of home. Maybe this tendency is deeper-rooted than any of our settlements or civilizations. For some of us the draw is intoxicating. It doesn’t help matters that most of us Americans are descended from people who set out for the new. Even the Native Americans – a month-long journey by sea is nothing compared to a decades long journey over the Arctic circle and over land to the present-day Lower Forty-Eight.
You can’t remove the tendency from human nature and I wouldn’t want to live in a society that made moving on criminal. But I do follow that commitment and loyalty and building and growing are good in and of themselves, and that a life lived with no limits will not satisfy. But although a commitment to a community and a connection to a geography are two things that do satisfy, being physically settled does not guarantee you are spiritually settled or satisfied.
“For foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

“Our emotions, rather than being annoyances that cloud our reason, actually evolved as a survival mechanism. Pity, sympathy, and empathy motivate us to help the less fortunate (or for others to help us when we’re the unfortunate ones!) far more often and more effectively than cold, utilitarian calculations. ”
Absolutely – so why do we put so much effort into attempts to come up with moral systems made of abstract propositions, the apparent goal being to create rules that would make a conscienceless automaton act properly? Why are attempts to derive these air castles treated with respect and deemed ‘philosophy,’ while attempts to actually teach people pity, sympathy, and empathy are often derided as childish, ‘mickey mouse,’ or ‘political correctness?’

Here’s another appropriate poem: Philip Larkin.
Poetry of Departures
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
as epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
and always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It’s specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard!
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I’d go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo’c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren’t so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

Pat: Absolutely – so why do we put so much effort into attempts to come up with moral systems made of abstract propositions, the apparent goal being to create rules that would make a conscienceless automaton act properly?
Well, you’ve got a point, and having taught ethics, I strongly think that any time you start to systematize too much you wind up with horrible conclusions. Still, while the emotions are essential, if they were all you relied upon you’d have problems, too. How many murders occur because someone got too hot-headed too fast and didn’t cool down before the trigger got pulled or the club got swung? Also, it seems hardwired into the same human brains that were made for groupings of 150 to distrust members of other groups. Probably a good idea for hunter-gatherers, but bad when groups get scapegoated in modern times, resulting in racism, massacres, Holocausts, and other such unpleasantness.
It’s not either/or–we don’t need to have a perfect philosophy that could allow an automaton to be ethical; but we don’t have to have the ultimate moral rule be that I feel this is the right thing to do, either. Logic and emotion aren’t (or shouldn’t be) foes, but partners. Kinda like Mr. Spock discovered in the first Star Trek movie.

We’ve been doing cities (meaning dense communities too large for everyone to be acqauainted wit heveryone else) for thousands of years. Our brains should be rewired to deal with that by now. Which by the way des not require genetic adaptation but only developmental modification: most of the fine detail “wiring” in our brains happens after birth and in early childhood– hence the fact that no one is born speaking a specific language but childen rapidly pick up on the language spoken around them.
And here too natural selection ought apply: people who do well in urban life ought thrive and pass their adaptations (whether genetic or otherwise) on to their descendants. Indeed, the cultural adaptations can be passed on to people who are not descendants.

Speaking of the paleocons quoted above, this thread on Facebook was fun:
Daniel McCarthy had a nightmare last night in which his friend Bill Kauffman professed to be a secret fan of NRO’s The Corner. If you know Bill’s work, you’ll know why that seemed so disturbing.
Clark Stooksbury: Bill’s more of a Pajamas Media man.
Jesse Walker: At least he didn’t say, “I write there under the pseudonym ‘Mark Levin.’”