Bertrand Russell
The Recrudescence of Puritanism
(1928)
Note
If somebody wondered where the “religion” of political correctness comes from or the persistent tendency of the Anglo-Saxons in favour of “good” causes, he/she has only to read this short essay. We find also an answer for the existence of victimless crime. It has all to do with the moral indignation of the bigoted that upholds his set of customs as the ethical standard that everybody must conform to, otherwise punishment is advocated, previously by way of Church excommunication and currently through State condemnation. But, as Bertrand Russell remarks, “moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.”
We may define a Puritan as a man who holds that certain kinds of acts, even if they have no visible bad effects upon others than the agent, are inherently sinful, and, being sinful, ought to be prevented by whatever means is most effectual – the criminal law if possible, and, if not that, then public opinion backed by economic pressure. This view is of respectable antiquity; indeed, it was probably responsible for the origin of criminal law. But originally it was reconciled with a utilitarian basis of legislation by the belief that certain crimes roused the anger of the gods against communities which tolerated them, and were therefore socially harmful. This point of view is embodied in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those who believe this story can justify, on utilitarian grounds, the existing laws against the crimes which led to the destruction of those cities. But nowadays even Puritans seldom adopt this point of view. Not even the Bishop of London has suggested that the earthquake in Tokyo was due to any peculiar wickedness of its inhabitants. The laws in question can, therefore, only be justified by the theory of vindictive punishment, which holds that certain sins, though they may not injure anyone except the sinner, are so heinous as to make it our duty to inflict pain upon the delinquent. This point of view, under the influence of Benthamism, lost its hold during the nineteenth century. But in recent years, with the general decay of Liberalism, it has regained lost ground, and has begun to threaten a new tyranny as oppressive as any in the Middle Ages.
It is from America that the new movement derives most of its force; it is one consequence of the fact that America was the sole victor in the war. The career of Puritanism has been curious. It held brief power in England in the seventeenth century, but so disgusted the mass of ordinary citizens that they have never again allowed it to control the Government. The Puritans, persecuted in England, colonized New England, and subsequently the Middle West. The American Civil War was a continuation of the English Civil War, the Southern States having been mainly colonized by opponents of the Puritans. But unlike the English Civil War, it led to a permanent victory of the Puritan Party. The result is that the greatest Power in the world is controlled by men who inherit the outlook of Cromwell’s Ironsides.
It would be unfair to point out the drawbacks of Puritanism without acknowledging its services to mankind. In England, in the seventeenth century and until modern times, it has stood for democracy against royal and aristocratic tyranny. In America, it stood for emancipation of the slaves, and did much to make America the champion of democracy throughout the world. These are great services to mankind, but they belong to the past. The problem of the present is not so much political democracy as the combination of order with liberty for minorities. This problem requires a different outlook from that of Puritanism; it requires tolerance and breadth of sympathy rather than moral fervour. Breadth of sympathy has never been a strong point with the Puritans. I will not say anything about the most noteworthy victory of Puritanism, namely, Prohibition in America. In any case, opponents of Prohibition cannot well make their opposition a matter of principle, since most of them would favour the prohibition of cocaine, which raises exactly the same questions of principle.
The practical objection to Puritanism, as to every form of fanaticism, is that it singles out certain evils as so much worse than others that they must be suppressed at all costs. The fanatic fails to recognize that the suppression of a real evil, if carried out too drastically, produces other evils which are even greater. We may illustrate by the law against obscene publications. No one denies that pleasure in obscenity is base, or that those who minister to it do harm. But when the law steps in to suppress it, much that is highly desirable is suppressed at the same rime. A few years ago, certain pictures by an eminent Dutch artist were sent through the post to an English purchaser. The Post Office officials, after enjoying a thorough inspection of them, concluded that they were obscene. (Appreciation of artistic merit is not expected of Civil Servants.) They therefore destroyed them, and the purchaser had no redress. The law gives power to the Post Office to destroy anything sent through the post that the officials consider obscene, and from their decision there is no appeal.
A more important example of the evils resulting from Puritan legislation arises in connection with birth control. It is obvious that ‘obscenity’ is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means ‘anything that shocks the magistrate’. Now an average magistrate is not shocked by information about birth control if it is given in an expensive book which uses long words and roundabout phrases, but is shocked if it is given in a cheap pamphlet using plain language that uneducated people can understand. Consequently it is at present illegal in England to give information on birth control to wage-earners, though it is legal to give it to educated people. Yet it is wage-earners above all to whom the information is important. It should be noted that the law takes no account whatever of the purpose of a publication, except in a few recognized cases such as medical textbooks. The sole question to be considered is: If this publication fell into the hands of a nasty minded boy, could it give him pleasure? If so, it must be destroyed, whatever the social importance of the information it contains. The harm done by the enforced ignorance which results is incalculable. Destitution, chronic illness among women, the birth of diseased children, over-population and war are regarded by our Puritan lawgivers as smaller evils than the hypothetical pleasure of a few foolish boys.
The law as it exists is thought to be not sufficiently drastic. Under the auspices of the League of Nations, an International Conference on Obscene Publications, as reported in The Times of September l7, l923, recommended a tightening-up of the law in the United States and in all the countries belonging to the League of Nations. The British delegate was apparently the most zealous in this good work.
Another matter which bas been made the basis for far-reaching legislation is the white-slave traffic. The real evil here is very grave, and is quite a proper matter for the criminal law. The real evil is that ignorant young women are enticed by false promises into a condition of semi-slavery in which their health is exposed to the gravest dangers. It is essentially a Labour question, to be dealt with on the lines of the Factory Acts and the Truck Acts. But it bas been made the excuse for gross interference with personal liberty in cases where the peculiar evils of the white-slave traffic are entirely absent. Some years ago a case was reported in the English papers in which a man had fallen in love with a prostitute and married her. After they had lived together happily for some time, she decided to go back to her old profession. There was no evidence that he suggested her doing so, or in any way approved of her action, but be did not at once quarrel with her and turn her out of doors. For this crime he was flogged and thrown into prison. He suffered this punishment under a law which was then recent, and which is still on the statute-book.
In America, under a similar law, though it is not illegal to keep a mistress, it is illegal to travel with her from one State to another; a New Yorker may take his mistress to Brooklyn but not to Jersey City. The difference of moral turpitude between these two actions is not obvious to the plain man.
On this matter, also, the League of Nations is endeavouring to secure more severe legislation. Some time ago, the Canadian delegate on the League of Nations Commission suggested that no woman, however old, should be allowed to travel on a steamer unless accompanied by her husband or by one of her parents. This proposal was not adopted, but it illustrates the direction in which we are moving. It is, of course, obvious that such measures turn all women into ‘white slaves’; women cannot have any freedom without a risk that some will use it for purposes of ‘immorality’. The only logical goal of these reformers is the purdah (*). There is another more general argument against the Puritan outlook. Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life. For rough practical purposes, pleasures may be divided into those that have their primary basis in the senses, and those that are mainly of the mind. The traditional moralist praises the latter at the expense of the former; or rather, he tolerates the latter because he does not recognize them as pleasures. His classification is, of course, not scientifically defensible, and in many cases he is himself in doubt. Do the pleasures of art belong to the senses or to the mind? If he is really stern, he will condemn art in toto, like Plato and the Fathers: if he is more or less latitudinarian, he will tolerate art if it has a ‘spiritual purpose’, which generally means that it is bad art. This is Tolstoy’s view. Marriage is another difficult case. The stricter moralists regard it as regrettable; the less strict praise it on the ground that it is generally unpleasant, especially when they succeed in making it indissoluble.
This, however, is not my point. My point is that pleasures which remain possible after the Puritan has done his utmost are more harmful than those that he condemns. Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. Consequently those who live under the dominion of Puritanism become exceedingly desirous of power. Now love of power does far more harm than love of drink or any of the other vices against which Puritans protest. Of course, in virtuous people love of power camouflages itself as love of doing good, but this makes very little difference to its social effects. It merely means that we punish our victims for being wicked, instead of for being our enemies. In either case, tyranny and war result. Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modem world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
Economic and political organization has inevitably increased with the growth of industrialism, and is bound to increase still further unless industrialism collapses. The earth becomes more crowded, and our dependence upon our neighbours becomes more intimate. In these circumstances life cannot remain tolerable unless we learn to let each other alone in all matters that are not of immediate and obvious concern to the community. We must learn to respect each other’s privacy, and not to impose our moral standards upon each other. The Puritan imagines that his moral standard is the moral standard; he does not realize that other ages and other countries, and even other groups in his own country, have moral standards different from his, to which they have as good a right as he has to his. Unfortunately, the love of power which is the natural outcome of Puritan self-denial makes the Puritan more executive than other people, and makes it difficult for others to resist him. Let us hope that a broader education and a wider knowledge of mankind may gradually weaken the ardour of our too virtuous masters.
(*) Purdah or Pardaa is the practice of preventing women from being seen by men. This takes two forms: physical segregation of the sexes, and the requirement for women to cover their bodies and conceal their form. Purdah exists in various forms in the Islamic world and among Hindu women in parts of India. (from Wikipedia)
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The “liberal” Bertrand Russell was a follower of Thomas Hobbes in politics (submission to the person or persons with the big stick – especially if they are ruthless), he advised submission to the Nazis during the 1930s – his answer to the Nazi threat was we “should invite them [the invading National Socialists] in for tea and explain our way of life to them”, and he advised submission to the Soviet Union from the 1950s onwards. Bertrand Russell was associated with the extreme wing of CND – the 100. People who (for example) helped the traitor (KGB agent) George Blake escape from prison.
To have an article by this revolting “champagne socialist” traitor, Bertrand Russell, put up on a site that claims to be libertarian is a disgrace – an utter disgrace. Whoever put this article on the site should hang their heads in shame.
By the way Bertrand Russell’s introduction to philosophy mislead (and corrupted) generations of students – something that, no doubt, amused him.
By all means attack “Puritanism” (if by that term one means the treatment of sins as CRIMES), but do not use this creature Russell to do so.
As for some of the legislation that Bertrand Russell attacks – he “forgets” to mention that it was not directed against him and one of his lady friends going over State lines, it was directed against violent PIMPS.
Those who smile at terms such as “the white slave trade” (indeed Mr Russell ironically uses the term “white slave” to mean the reverse of what it actually meant – he does not mention that he is reversing [twisting by 180 degrees] the normal usage of the term), “forgetting ” the evil of human trafficking of women (of all races) by violent and abusive pimps;
Whether a specific piece of legislation is a good or a bad way of fighting this horror is a matter for legitimate debate (I think the legislation was a bad way) – but Mr Russell does not even mention the horror (the pimps, the human traffickers – the slave masters, and the abuse they inflected upon women), as with his treatment of the Nazi question and the Soviet question Mr Russell pretends that the horror does not even exist.
I was fully aware of Mr Russell’s treasonable efforts on behalf of first the Nazis (supporting submission to them) and then the Soviet Marxists (supporting submission to them), but I was NOT aware of his support for the abusers of women – the pimps, the traffickers in human flesh.
I am now aware of this.
For those who claim that Bertrand Russell only became a socialist in his old age – due to senility or the influence of KGB (and Fellow Traveller) propaganda (which dominated his view of everything from the death of President Kennedy to the Vietnam war to……..) and that his standing as a Labour Party candidate in the 1920s was some sort of joke…..
See his 1935 essay “The Case for Socialism”, The idea of taking this man as an authority on matters of freedom is absurd. His “non Marxist socialism” is still a boot on the face for ever, it is just an elegant World Government boot, which is well shined and pretty.
One might as well take Thomas Hobbes as one’s guide – indeed at least Hobbes is open in his evil, “gentleman” such as Bertrand Russell are masters of using nice sounding polite language as a mask.
There were (alas) many examples of these vermin among the British (and American) upper classes of the period.
Useful things can be said by people of all sides of a debate. I’m an atheist, but that doesn’t stop me finding useful things said by Christians, and I don’t deny their merit for that reason. Russell was a man of the Left, but here he says something useful. Orwell was a socialist too, but created two of the finest critiques of the Left in history- of the Communists in Animal Farm, and of the British bourgeois Left in The Road To Wigan Pier. His observations in that of Socialism as a crank magnet are pure class.
If anything, Russell in this essay is too soft on White Slavery. It was a fiction by activist reformers a century ago just as its modern recrudescence- the “sex trafficking” myth is. Which is why the authorities had the same trouble trying to find any actual white slaves then as our modern authorities are in finding them now.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
The answer to what they do next is found in Puritan doyenne Jane Addams’s jeremiad against the imaginary evil, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil . Having fixed in the minds of a gullible public an image of waifish white girls chained to beds by swarthy pimpmasters, they then blur out to a “slavery of the mind”. Read with a rationalist mind, the book is pure comedy; Addams starts with implausible tales of girls from the country and primitive barbaroi nations like France(!) tricked into slavery, but none of this being actually possible to find, smears into the slavery of the mind caused by consumerism. So, we find her telling us that girls are so desirous of fine clothes to wear that they become prostitutes to earn money to buy them. A libertarian might consider this a conscious decision of free will, and indeed how the free market works. Not Addams. For Addams, it is that thing the Puritan most fears; they are “slaves of the passions”. Oh noes! The section where Addams rails from her pulpit regarding young women going to safe houses where they can wear their fine clothes safe from the watchful eyes of their mothers is pure comedy gold.
Does this mean there are no problems in the sex trade? Of course not. But any libertarian should recognise these problems as the consequence of prohibition. Criminalisation means that black markets are run by people who are prepared and sufficiently capable to break the law, and use illegal methods. The drugs trade is the typical example here. It is largely run by thuggish gangs, and people who get involved in it can end up in serious trouble. When alcohol was prohibited by the Puritan party, it became a trade run by “The Mob” and as such we saw plenty of lurid melodrama at the time about people in trouble with said Mob, of the “if I don’ have a thousand bucks by thoisday, dey gonna break my kneecaps!”. It tells us nothing about the validity of the trade itself. Legal beer is “trafficked” by boring legitimate businesses who send each other invoices rather than breaking each others kneecaps and restrict their competition to advertising campaigns rather than driving past one another unleashing hails of machine gun fire. Likewise, what problems there are in sex work are due to Puritan criminalisations and restrictions. Full re-legalisation again is the answer. A simple answer which, like relegalisation of narcotics, isn’t going to be possible until we are honest about who the Puritan party are, and actively expel them from our political structure.
This is such a good and succinct summing-up of the entire scenario, that we ought to promote you to the front page.
If you’d only give in and be an “Author”, libertarianism might clean up, and we’d perhaps be able to fix the world before the next Ice-Age-Hit – about 500-700 years’ time, so the GREENS say…
Some humans might even be able to “_get off_” , before it hits…..
The main question any libertarian would reasonably ask is whether the influence of the Puritan party is a major or minor issue. One might reasonably argue that there are far greater issues; the economics of inflationism. War. Communism and fascism. Does the State’s war on drinkers and smokers, whores and junkies, really matter that much? My argument is that it is central for two reasons.
The first is that of the State’s intrusion into the private sphere. The policing of the private sphere forces the State to proactive intervention. Stopping and searching of private citizens and their vehicles becomes the norm. Private properties must be “raided” (and, on the American model, with as many vanloads of police and attending news reporters as possible). The policing of widespread citizen activity means that the prisons fill with the perpetrators of non-crimes, and the citizenship become used to the idea of being taken to a jail for having harmed nobody, but simply having offended the morals of the bougeoisie. People rapidly lose the idea that they have something called “rights” under such a regime. In America, it has educated the population- along with other measures- to accept the Constitution to be a dead letter, or rather a plastic document to be bent to the will of the powerful. There is no award of the right to regulate either sex or drugs to the Federal Government in the Constitution, but not to worry- the Interstates Commerce Clause rides to the rescue!
Which, by the way, is why these non-crimes are characterised as “trafficking”. By characterising them in terms of a “trade”, they are bent into the shape necessary to justify their prohibition- they are interstate trade!
Thank you, Constitution, that will do nicely!
The second issue is this; once you have accepted the government’s right to interfere in minutiae such as whether or when you can drink a pot of beer, or what you may do in your bedroom, you have lost the argument on bigger rights. If you’ve agreed that the State can peer into every private nook and cranny of your life as a means of “social regulation” or overtly to prevent sin, you can hardly defend your right to speak freely in the public square, or that your money is your own and argue against taxes, or claim that private businesses should have freedom of contract, or that a man’s home is his castle. You already invited the State into your bedroom and your parlour. It’s too late to raise the drawbridge once you’ve done that.
So in this model, the Puritans are the “wedge” that open up the citizen to general State coercion, in our socio-political system. We have rightly condemned other forms of oppression in other societies. The issue I believe is that this is our form of oppression, our native model of it. It is not Fascism or Communism, or Islam, or some foreign thing. This is how the totalitarians of our society operate; and that is the central argument of The Puritan Hypothesis, really. We need to turn the spotlight on ourselves (in a national “us” sense) and recognise that the tyranny we term things like “Political Correctness” is something that we have done, or are doing, to ourselves; and have been doing, in lesser or greater degrees at various times, since the Reformation. Until we do that, we will not see our way out of this growing tyranny and the sooner we do so, the better.
Golly!
Talk about “GUN-DIRECTOR TO BRIDGE! TARGET BEARING GREEN 16, TRENDING 17 -1-1-1…steady…steady…that, BEARING _THAT_ RANGE 26100_ …UP 2 RIGHT 3, BEARING _THAT_ * * * * * * * * (all 8 guns report ready) SHOOT!
Ian, what you said here should be a post on its own. Can I do that please? It’s actually rather important that you say I can or I can’t.
Sorry about the facetious stuff which I can’t resist, but I do think we are in a war. Most people don’t really credit that. A shame really.
David, I’ll be honest. There is significant turmoil in my private life at the moment and while it is most flattering that you and Sean keep asking me to be a “front pager”, it is not a responsibility I wish to deal with right now. Because as at Counting Cats, I do feel it is a responsibility- not only to write regularly, but to do so in a properly sourced manner, rather than in the looser manner of a commenter. I would like to take you up on your generous offer, but some time in the future. If you feel anything I write in the comments is worthy of “promotion”, feel free to do so.
The primary problem is that much of what I write is based on drawing my own conclusions from years of reading and thinking and so on. Of course it may well be claptrap. But I don’t really have the time to organise justifying sources for my conclusions and answer criticisms properly, which puts me in a spot where my arguments are justifiably seen as weak. I don’t even have the time to properly answer Paul’s voluminous criticisms. What I do at the moment, such as it is, is the best I can do for now, I think. If it has some merit to other people, that is the best I can do.
Ok old man. Whenever and if ever you would like to “drive on here”, just say to Sean or me, and it’ll get done.
Ian, what the devil is the “Puritan party”? You mean the proggies?
Also, just because our Most Reverend Supreme Courts of late (say, the last 80 or more years) have tended to base the meaning of “to regulate” on the modern understanding of the word, which is subtly different from what was meant at the time Constitution was written, doesn’t mean you should repeat the error. The Commerce Clause was mostly intended to see that the States didn’t impose tariffs on goods imported from other States. I would tend to doubt that the States were supposed to view this or that item from another State as contraband, either, but I have no authority whatsoever that discusses the issue.
Also, speaking of words’ meanings, the word “trafficking” in the U.S. is usually used specifically as opposed to non-criminal trading. The word “dealing” is used to refer both licit and illicit commerce. In short, I don’t think that “trafficking” stretches at all easily into the common understanding of “trade” or commerce generally.
I should have included the point that as “regulate” meant “to make regular,” including the meaning of “to make smoothly, properly functioning,” or “functioning in an orderly manner,” the authority “to regulate commerce among the several states” would presumably have meant generally that the States were all to treat commerce with one another the same. If so, the State of Michigan could not dictate that (say) “russet” potatoes from Idaho would be allowed in for purposes of re-sale at three times the volume of russet potatoes from Maine.
Again, though, I have no authority on this to cite.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, and it’s quite true that the leftest of leftist pontificators probably has a good point SOMEWHERE in the œuvre. Especially when it comes to practical psychology and the manipulation of populations. Unfortunately.
But, while no pronouncement from any source should be accepted uncritically (insofar as one is equipped to judge; I can’t honestly say that in my wholly-independent judgment the earth goes around the sun, for instance), it’s certainly wise to give the pronouncements of lefties, one-world types, and so on extra scrutiny and care. They have had and still have a tendency to make seemingly-plausible arguments or state as “facts” things that actually are not, however commonsensical or intuitively correct they may sound. An awful lot of people, for instance, have bought Marx’s Labor Theory of Value (even if they never heard of Ricardo and others), from lefties who have presented it to them.
So calling any particular view of Russell’s into question is a perfectly sensible and rational thing to do, even if one agrees with his conclusion. (And even if the conclusion were correct, the argument for it could be wrong. This is as likely to happen with non-lefties as with lefties, I should think.)
Julie-
I used “Puritan party” in the same sense as people use phrases like “war party” and “peace party”, as a general term to describe some particular group who share a particular bent in terms of ideology or outcomes. Like here-
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/02/24/who-funds-the-war-party/
It is roughly congruent with progressives currently, but not exclusively, and historically various people have been part of it. There are also of course members (or fellow travellers) on the Right.
I did not post the example of the Commerce Clause because I agree with that interpretation, but to illustrate the framing of language to suit the bending of the Constitution in the USA.
I also disagree that one should dismiss (sorry, “be more sceptical of”) people based on who they are. What matters is the validity or otherwise of what they say. The point here was simply to illustrate that others from diverse backgrounds have recognised the same thing, and a long time ago; the main bit in this of interest is Russell’s recognition that the Puritans won the Civil War. For me, anyway.
Ignoring people from “the other side” is classic ideological isolationism, and is what we see on the Left. It’s “I don’t care how good this man’s argument is, he is a RepubliKKKan Conservative Neoliberal etc etc”. We can be and should be better than that.
Just as an aside really, the playwright (or creator, since they are improvised) Mike Leigh produced a fabulous play in 1975 that chronicles early neo-puritans as the unbearable couple Keith and Candice Marie-
http://youtu.be/ptugM-zad9A
It’s well worth a watch for anyone who hasn’t seen it, since it is both funny and a kind of warning from history that we ignored. They were at the time figures of fun; now Keith and Candice Marie run the Western World. My sister and I for years had a running gag from one point where they are earnestly discussing for how long one must chew food- Keith has a rule for everything (72 times), and eventually he comes out with this line “I think the important thing is to use your discretion”. Well we thought it was funny.
Ian:
Mea maxima, maxissima culpa. 🙁
Julie, that’s the thing. I’m not interested in trusting anybody. Anyone can lie, and anyone can be mistaken. The reliability of the person is effectively useless. I can think of examples of “well known facts” to reliable people on our side which I’ve found are total cobblers. It’s just no use at all as a filter.
If I were relying on Russell as an authority, your point might be valid. But since I’m not quoting him as an authority- and if I were, I would check the claimed facts anyway- that doesn’t apply. I originally just posted the link in another thread to indicate an example of somebody else coming to a similar conclusion, which is interesting because they are from a different side of the argument (in ideological terms) to me. This isn’t a trust situation, so trust just doesn’t apply.
Ian, this whole thing doesn’t follow from your Russell link from the other discussion. My first comment here followed from the Russell posting on this page, to which Paul took issue; with whom you took issue; and then I responded to that. You don’t quote Russell here, and nobody said you did.
As for trust. You’re human like everyone else; therefore your time and your on-board computing resources (wetware) are limited, like everyone else’s. You can’t check out your old mechanic every time you need your car fixed, and you can’t check every fact stated in every non-fiction work you read, and you can’t follow every argument made in every non-fiction work you read. There isn’t enough time for one person to do all that, and no one person has the research capabilities to do all the checking of sources and facts. It’s just — Neil Armstrong says he walked on the moon, but Joe Schmoe says the moon landing was faked and the footage shot in RKO’s back lot in Culver City (or whatever, I forget exactly). Now, who do you believe practically automatically? Do you really propose to check out every last detail to verify that Mr. Armstrong really did take that “one small step”?
Don’t say the example is silly, because it’s not. There are people whose word we take with a higher ranking of probable truth than what we give to the words of some other people, and one of the things we automatically rely on is our own judgment of the past performance of people.
Pointing this out, and admitting it honestly, doesn’t make one a blind party-liner or a parrot or a dupe. It makes one honest–and smart.
Julie, it’s like you didn’t read what I wrote. As I keep saying, we are not asking Russell for any kind of authority, so trust just doesn’t come into it, so your whole argument on the subject is basically irrelevant. You’re really just saying “he’s a leftie so phooey”.
Separately; on the issue of trusting sources, it seems to me that most people don’t really go on reliability anyway. They judge the source on agreement. People apply a low standard to persons who are on their side, and a high standard to people who are on the other side. Because really, all we want emotionally is to be correct.
I’ll give an example (because it happens to be niggling me currently). Get among any group of supporters of the Cultural Marxism Hypothesis and you might as well set a stopwatch to time how long it takes for somebody to reel out a quote attributed to Willi Munzenberg- “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks!”. It’s all over the internet. And because this supports “our” side, hardly anyone ever questions it. I tried to track it down. The actual source appears to be a book by Ralph De Toledano, which is out of print and I can’t find a pdf either. At some point I mean to try to get a copy via a library. The actual quote in the book appears to be rather different- “We will organise the intllectuals. We will make America stink!”. Nobody seems to quote any context for this, and it is actually a rather different statement. It does not mention “The West” and notably it does not mention “corrupt” either. But in its mutated form, it seems to support the CMH proposal that neo-marxism is deliberately “corrupting” the West via immorality. So people prefer that version. So that’s what they pass around. And that’s even if he actually said it; he may have done, but we can hardly take it as gospel on the limited evidence.
When things matter, you have to check everything. Even when (or perhaps especially when) it is agreeable to one’s own prejudices.
In real life it was socialist Mr Russell and his socialist friends who were the enemies of freedom (see his essay “The Case for Socialism”) – yet in this article he is posing as a friend of freedom.
Mr Russell takes pieces of legislation that were aimed at human trafficers (a problem we face today – and these pimps are some of the worst scum in the world) and pretends that it is aimed at him and his lady friends. Mr Russell does not even mention what this stuff what was really about. He does not argue that the legislation was badly framed for its objective – he does not even mention the objective (the actual problem – the vicious pimps).
The whole thing is an effort to DISTRACT ATTENTION from the real threat to freedom – the socialist Mr Russell and his socialist friends.
What is wrong with this stupid site? Is there no enemy of freedom it does not pretend was a friend of freedom?
As for Bertrand Russell see Chapter Eight of Paul Johnson’s book “Intellectuals” – although Johnson is much too soft on him. Russell was a traitor not just an intellectual one, but a practical one – he supported his countries enemies (by his own free choice).
Were “Puritans” really behind such things as Prohibition? No they were not – see J. Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism”, the role of “Puritan” types DID EXIST – but it was minor (they were not in the drivers seat).
Is “Puritanism” the major problem we face today? No it is not.
The major problems we face today are the credit bubble financial system (rather than a financial system based upon real savings), and the out of control Welfare State – and the “Social Justice” ideology that stands behind it (and will wipe out civilisation if it can).
“Ah but some Puritans support both of these things” – perhaps, but they did not create either and they are not in the driving seat.
Ian, it’s hopeless. We’re talking past each other. I feel the same as you: “It’s as if you didn’t read what I wrote.” I wish you knew how skeptical a frame of mind I bring to people who are supposedly on “our side.”
As for checking sources, I have in some quarters a bit of a rep for overdoing it — and I don’t believe in masking links, either. Your point above is perfectly valid, as I said (in different words and perhaps less emphatically) in the first place. And as to not reading what I wrote, I couldn’t possibly have been more specifically NOT saying “he’s a lefty so phooey.”
But I gots to say, It’s been real. 😐
In that case Julie I have no idea what we’re arguing about. I don’t say that as some kind of dismissal or put down, but genuinely.
So going off at a tangent, here’s not an answer to whatever our argument is, but just a general view I have on evidence. Carl Sagan famously said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. I think that is actually flawed. The problem is what counts as “extraordinary”. It just means something that I, subjectively, find difficult to believe. For an atheist, miracles are extraordinary. They are not extraordinary to a Christian. Many Christians find Evolution extraordinary, but I do not. Thus, we all get into a thing of saying that there’s never really enough evidence for claims we find extraordinary, and go round in circles.
I think a more useful rule of thumb is that the more important a claim is, the more evidence one must require. As an example; if Paul says he was in Kettering on June16th, I will probably believe him. I don’t have any proof beyond his statement, but it is no issue if he is for some strange reason lying (or wrong- perhaps he is insane and only thinks he was in Kettering).
But if Paul is on trial for a murder in Wellingborough on June 16th, and his alibi is that he was in Kettering on that date, now the court needs much more evidence. It cannot simply take his word for it. I think this is a general principle. The more something matters, the more sceptical force I will apply to it. Regardless of whether I personally subjectively consider it extraordinary or not. Which is basically why I started looking around for something other than the CMH to explain the current situation; because although I actually rather liked the idea- the CMH is a nice neat theory of everything- the more I tested it the more holes (in my view) appeared, and I was led to consider other possibilities.
One major problem was one of timing. Logically, if we postulate that A caused B, then a must chronologically precede B. The problem is that chronologically, B precedes A. If the claim is that a social movement was caused by the Frankfurt School (who date back at most to the 1930s) and I find that movement as far back as, say, 1860, the claim is in severe trouble.
Well anyway, since Bertrand Russell has caused such upset, I will offer instead Murray Rothbard-
http://mises.org/daily/2225
-so that he too can no doubt be denounced as not sufficiently Libertarian, or something.