Philosophers Join the Fray

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Left2Right, a new group blog by a bunch of incredibly distinguished moral and political philosophers (I was surprised to receive a promotional email from David Velleman), promises to be interesting reading and a prime source of good blogging material. The mission of the blog is to think out loud about how the left can better communicate to the right. Judging from the first few posts, it seems that we will be treated to a good deal of armchair sociology from smart philosophers, which is always amusing. It will, I fear, tell us more about how professional academics conceptualize the right than anything particularly useful and true about how to engage the right. Nevertheless, I’m glad to see that the faculty lounge of a fantasy political philosophy department is open to the public.

34 thoughts on “Philosophers Join the Fray”

  1. They don’t seem to be off to a very good start. They are talking at people they insult by caricature.

    This bunch has a classic left monologue: Talk until they agree with us. If they don’t agree with us we haven’t talked enough. Pfeh.

  2. Wow. Much worse than expected. Looks like our nation’s preeminent philosophers have reached the groundbreaking conclusion that driving an SUV demonstrates moral turpitude.

  3. I agree with my fellow Brian above- the latest posts are more in line of what I’d consider a “malicious parody foisted upon semi-public intellectuals” ala CT’s pissy sarcastic response to Posner/Becker than a serious effort to try and communicate lefty ideas to righties.

    Every promising post has been taken back, essentially, by other folk- first someone saying Garrison Keillor’s sneering, wink-wink ‘joke’ about taking away (rightward-leaning) Christian rights to vote *was* funny and appropriate (and you unsophisticated righty rubes just can’t appreciate his deep and harmless humor without explanation), to other people saying “we don’t need Roe, we just need a constitutional amendment that codifies Roe into law” (as if that’s some sort of great compromise, negating the point of the post that trying to keep the 5% fringe by keeping Roe is fueling the social conservatives and leading to the repeal of large parts of the 95% that majorities do favor), to other posts that essentially say “you religious conservatives are stupid” and “we’re not saying we’re against prayer in school, we’re just against prayer in school- don’t you get that big difference??”

    The blog so far has boiled down to the usual caricature of peasant rubes (a literal analogy used; lefties are royalty who don’t care that the peasants spit when they go by, but Righties are peasants whose feelings are hurt when the Royal Left holds its nose when passing) who need to be condescended to, to understand the Higher Truth of teh Left- which, unsurprisingly, is anti-clerical, anti-religious, technocratic-elitist-at-best [authoritarian socialist at worse], and nanny-statist, with an explicit goal of engineering out all the yucky/icky righty/red-state folkways in favor of uniform ‘cosmopolitanism’.

    Will, I’m a bit surprised given your position post-election that explicitly rejected the condescending lefty view to red-staters that you haven’t had the same reaction as I to 75% of the posts that are currently up. I see better social commentary & respect for righties from the guys at CT and most of them are unapologetic socialists.

  6. These folks have proven that it’s better to remain silent and be thought an out-of-touch, effete, lefty academic than to start a blog and remove all doubt.

  7. The only way to defeat the right is to defang them by confiscating their excess property and putting them to work like the rest of us. Everybody has to pull their own weight. We can start with a luxury tax and by removing the tax-exempt status of churches and restoring the estate tax. Talk is cheap let’s have some …

    –Serious Proposals

  8. Yeah, just why should a pretty face like JFK Jr.’s be entitled to a tax-exempt 100 million dollar trust fund? He was so dumb that he couldn’t pass to bar after several attempts and we all know about his ability to fly a plane. Clearly noone in this country believes in a meritocracy or GWB would never have become President. And why are all the U.S Senators multi-millionaires? This is a country of, for and by the wealthy. And it stinks!

  10. Thanks for the link, Will! I actually like the site. Even though I’m not a lefty it’s nice to have a place to go to read probably the best commentary from that perspective available anywhere. (Although I see that Schmidtz from Arizona is part of the group. So they’re obviously not all lefty.)

  11. Actually, I think this may work. I’ve only skimmed some of the older stuff, and I think these people may have some adjusting to do when confronted with the typical range of commentary you get on blogs. But this is a chance to make these folks realize that what they consider neutral ground is actually comprised of their assumptions. Aristotle told us that the unexamined life is not worth living; I think these people may find out that they haven’t examined themselves nearly as thoroughly as they thought they had.

  13. Damn. You’re right. I was visualizing the wrong pithy quote in my head: “all men by nature desire to know.” I can practically see it on my mental page of my Pocket Aristotle. Sigh; that’s what I get for relying on visual memory for quotations.

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  19. They don’t seem to be off to a very good start. They are talking at people they insult by caricature.

    This bunch has a classic left monologue: Talk until they agree with us. If they don’t agree with us we haven’t talked enough. Pfeh.

  20. Wow. Much worse than expected. Looks like our nation’s preeminent philosophers have reached the groundbreaking conclusion that driving an SUV demonstrates moral turpitude.

  21. I agree with my fellow Brian above- the latest posts are more in line of what I’d consider a “malicious parody foisted upon semi-public intellectuals” ala CT’s pissy sarcastic response to Posner/Becker than a serious effort to try and communicate lefty ideas to righties.

    Every promising post has been taken back, essentially, by other folk- first someone saying Garrison Keillor’s sneering, wink-wink ‘joke’ about taking away (rightward-leaning) Christian rights to vote *was* funny and appropriate (and you unsophisticated righty rubes just can’t appreciate his deep and harmless humor without explanation), to other people saying “we don’t need Roe, we just need a constitutional amendment that codifies Roe into law” (as if that’s some sort of great compromise, negating the point of the post that trying to keep the 5% fringe by keeping Roe is fueling the social conservatives and leading to the repeal of large parts of the 95% that majorities do favor), to other posts that essentially say “you religious conservatives are stupid” and “we’re not saying we’re against prayer in school, we’re just against prayer in school- don’t you get that big difference??”

    The blog so far has boiled down to the usual caricature of peasant rubes (a literal analogy used; lefties are royalty who don’t care that the peasants spit when they go by, but Righties are peasants whose feelings are hurt when the Royal Left holds its nose when passing) who need to be condescended to, to understand the Higher Truth of teh Left- which, unsurprisingly, is anti-clerical, anti-religious, technocratic-elitist-at-best [authoritarian socialist at worse], and nanny-statist, with an explicit goal of engineering out all the yucky/icky righty/red-state folkways in favor of uniform ‘cosmopolitanism’.

    Will, I’m a bit surprised given your position post-election that explicitly rejected the condescending lefty view to red-staters that you haven’t had the same reaction as I to 75% of the posts that are currently up. I see better social commentary & respect for righties from the guys at CT and most of them are unapologetic socialists.

  24. These folks have proven that it’s better to remain silent and be thought an out-of-touch, effete, lefty academic than to start a blog and remove all doubt.

  25. The only way to defeat the right is to defang them by confiscating their excess property and putting them to work like the rest of us. Everybody has to pull their own weight. We can start with a luxury tax and by removing the tax-exempt status of churches and restoring the estate tax. Talk is cheap let’s have some …

    –Serious Proposals

  26. Yeah, just why should a pretty face like JFK Jr.’s be entitled to a tax-exempt 100 million dollar trust fund? He was so dumb that he couldn’t pass to bar after several attempts and we all know about his ability to fly a plane. Clearly noone in this country believes in a meritocracy or GWB would never have become President. And why are all the U.S Senators multi-millionaires? This is a country of, for and by the wealthy. And it stinks!

  28. Thanks for the link, Will! I actually like the site. Even though I’m not a lefty it’s nice to have a place to go to read probably the best commentary from that perspective available anywhere. (Although I see that Schmidtz from Arizona is part of the group. So they’re obviously not all lefty.)

  29. Actually, I think this may work. I’ve only skimmed some of the older stuff, and I think these people may have some adjusting to do when confronted with the typical range of commentary you get on blogs. But this is a chance to make these folks realize that what they consider neutral ground is actually comprised of their assumptions. Aristotle told us that the unexamined life is not worth living; I think these people may find out that they haven’t examined themselves nearly as thoroughly as they thought they had.

  31. Damn. You’re right. I was visualizing the wrong pithy quote in my head: “all men by nature desire to know.” I can practically see it on my mental page of my Pocket Aristotle. Sigh; that’s what I get for relying on visual memory for quotations.