Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com" <janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com>]

You opened so well. Federalist #10 is my favorite of the Federalist Papers.

Then you fell into conclusions that do not match mine.

I agree that pluralism as you describe it - belief in the ascendancy of our attachment to factions instead of love of the whole, patriotism, love of country - is not good.

The trouble is when I look up the definition of pluralism, it is the opposite of how you describe it.

So I am going to tell you how I read #10:

Our country needed a strong central symbol, the flag, a president, so that our individual interests (factions) could never get big enough to disrupt or bring down the whole. If we wanted to be a "country", able to defend itself against outside mischief from other countries, we had to be unified. Pluralism entailed allowing individuals as well as states and individual interests to be protected from meddling or destruction, as long as those individuals did not break the country's laws. 

The colonies were worried that they had just left the King and wanted no parts of a president. So #10 tried to explain all about the protections we would put in place so individual interests and minorities would not fall prey  to a new kind of tyranny. They would put in place protections of each state by having representations in a Senate where every colony - eventually state - would get the same representation no matter how small it was compared to the others. They would put in place a Court to interpret the law. And the constant tension among all of these entities would prevent a president from having too much power and individuals or groups with they interest from inciting confusions to bring down the whole, the U.S.

The central power in the hands of a president having to contend with these safeguards against its controlling all the power would help keep all individual Americans safe.

The larger the country, the more diverse the separate states, the more difficult it would be for a dictatorship to arise.

The colonies became convinced and stopped fearing having a president.

 Again, you were doing so well, It is true that leftists of recent history love chopping us up into groups with grievances so they can better control us.

Where you went astray is when you began describing the "seething resentment " of the right and its origins.

There is no resentment in Republicans and other rightists here from having Civil Rights legislation shoved down "their throats".

It was the Republicans throughout our history who instigated and helped bring about the end of slavery against the Democrats. It was the right which fought for integration. 

The KKK, those who fought to preserve slavery and prevent integration of schools were always in the Democrat Party. 

LBJ got lots of attention when he passed the Civil Rights act, but without the votes of Republicans in Congress, it would never have come to fruition.

Tax cuts were never designed to drive up the deficit, but to spur growth of the economy which would bring more money into government, not less. When JFK passed his tax cuts, the economy got a big push and the government made more money.

Yes, both sides promise heaven on earth. But if you look at the history from 1976 until today it is a series of democrats pulling the country away from capitalism and Republicans correcting their mistakes and fixing the country and then the sliding again when democrats win again.

 Taking power away from the central government to give us goodies or manage things is a good thing. 

 Reagan fixed Carter's disastrous economy. 

Under Clinton we were headed back to catastrophe again until the 1994 Republican congress came in and fixed everything again, and then Clinton took credit for it, and that's okay, because at least he didn't get in the way. And I don't want to ruffle feathers, but recently the pattern began again. 

And until the plague hit us, we were coasting along in the best economy ever.

Too much federal spending is terrible, I agree and both sides are guilty of that. Dismantling private property protection is lethally bad. We agree there. Oligarchs stealing from private citizens is a disease, yes. Taking power from individuals is dangerous. But we get more of these bad things every time we elect Democrats and this time the contrast couldn't be starker.

I don't know about the Koch Brothers, but George Soros and the teachers unions have them beat when it comes to stealing power from individuals and placing it in the hands of government operators.

Wages were going up, unemployment was virtually disappearing, and minorities of all kinds benefitted from these things the most. And then the pandemic struck and we were told were have to close down the economy. 

If this hadn't happened, we would have been in excellent economic shape.

The chaos of now is a left wing phenomenon. These destructive mobs are avowed Marxists by their own definition. the graffiti and bringing down of statues and buildings and chaos and murder is all a left wing phenomenon these days - and BTW, occurring in cities run by progressive democrats.

As for the left abandoning claims on material wealth and economic justice, where do you see that? It is in the Democrat party where you find the most rich who came into government with modest savings and left multi millionaires.

Hillsdale College, which I would describe as closer to conservatism than liberalism as defined these days, does not deconstruct, does not elevate personal revelation above law or enable will to power movement. Hillsdale encourages individual responsibility.

 Lovers of safe spaces where nobody has to be overruled is a leftist phenomenon.

Where are you finding in your George Zimmerman narrative that those three points you name are being forgotten by the Right? I call myself a rightist and those points seem just fine to me.

Look how easy it is for two sides to see the same facts and come to completely different readings of what is going on.

Of course, the big question is what would Percy make of it all these days?

I am guessing he would hate what anarchist Marxists are doing to our cities, and attempting to do to our history, and our culture. We all should. I know that Percy would despair that things are not better. And I suspect he might find it very difficult to write those crazy fun house novels of his with their gorgeous endings.

I suggest that each of us should settle down and set aside time to read the beautiful book by Wilfred McClay, Land of Hope. It clears up a lot of the confusion between Wade Riddick and me. And, borrowing from Ariel in The Tempest, it is so inspiring, it will make any reader cry if he is human.

Janet Cantor

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 3:47 AM, Wade Riddick

<wriddick AT usa.net> wrote:

What many people fail to understand is that both the Knotheads and the

NOT-heads (i.e., "cancel culture") spring from the same toxic stew of sins:

pluralism.

Pluralism is the belief that we have rights not as citizens of countries but

through the groups we belong to - race, gender, etc.  The pluralists think

democracy is useless and unless we bind together into our "group" we can't be

represented.  Leaving the group for another or disagreeing with your assigned

"interest" is the deepest betrayal and provokes a backlash imminently Freudian

in its ferocity.  I haven't seen anything like it since I argued with the

Communist Party cult remnants in graduate school about the value of money.

They don't accept that "interests" cut across these boundaries.  They don't

want to see, for instance, that women have an interest in men graduating from

college so they can have marriageable mates.  They're an extension of the

Zuckerberg computerization of our lives that wants to chop us up into

interests so they can monetize us when we connect that way.

NOT-heads aren't "almost angry" at the Constitution; they're in outright

contempt of it because the founders were explicitly against this form of

thinking.  In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison warns that giving organized

groups of people the same rights as actual individual citizens will destroy

real rights for those citizens and enable factionalism.  This type of group

behavior has to be controlled or it will destroy the community of democracy.

The knotheads are simply a different side of that tribalism - the Confederacy

tribe.  This other great enemy of democracy has been engaged in its own long

war against federalism going back to the days of the first Confederacy.  The

anger you see on the "right" is seething resentment from having civil rights

legislation shoved down their throats.  Since the '70s, the Republican Party

has been fueled by vendetta Dixiecrats fishing for ways to make the Federal

government fail - first with Nixon's failed budget impoundment, then with tax

cuts they hoped would drive up the deficit so high one day they could use it

as an excuse to gut spending.  ("We're finally bankrupt.  Yay!")  But every

escalating disaster caused by their sabotage of government action - 9/11,

credit default swap implosions, Hurricane Katerina, S&L crises - only

increased demand for government action - because, as you see today, there's no

other central actor in America that can handle crises of this magnitude.

These two sides resemble one another because racism - tribal revenge - is a

communicable disease, quickly mutualizing contempt when unchecked.  Social

media has brought us into one another's lives like never before and many of us

can't stand what we see. (Maybe better digital fences would make better

digital neighbors.)  Contempt breeds contempt and without tolerance for one

another, democratic compromise is impossible and we can't govern ourselves -

which suits the short-term interests of the oligarchs just fine.  They need to

dismantle property protections (i.e., the justice system), if they're going to

steal from us.

What does this have to do with anything?

When you leave groups on their own to organize, those with the most money

oraganize the best.  Sick people are probably the most important group in the

country because when you become sick, you lose your autonomy and become

dependent upon others.  Sick people also have the least influence on the

political system because all our time and money is tied up in being sick.

Ditto for groups like the poor and unemployed - because you need resources to

organize yourselves.  Some interests can't organize themselves like this.

That's the function of government - to organize and address the concerns of

all citizens.

What the NOT-heads fail to acknowledge is that their attitudes towards

politics benefit the very oligarchs paying for us to hate each other.  The

insidious idea underlying pluralism is that these groups somehow "compete"

with one another for "influence" over the government.  That is, they bribe

officials.  This is what I mean when I say a coup took place at the Supreme

Court level in the 1970s when unelected judges equated bribery of politicians

with "free speech."  If you want to see what the Koch Brother's perfect market

in politics looks like, go visit Mexico today where every official is

available for a price (or soon shot).  That's the future that awaits us.

So these two groups, lacking any pragmatic influence on positive agendas,

can't govern.  They can only veto, fume and fulminate.  That's where we find

ourselves.  They both promise heaven on earth but can't even stop graffiti,

much less a pandemic.  Reality collides with these delusions and knocks

followers into the same fatalistic flights of fancy that all failed

charismatic cults descend into.  Donald Trump becomes the Stokely Carmichael

of white power and the Abbie Hoffman of the pandemic - gonna levitate that

'ronavirus with the good feelings of his mind ray.

It's clear how the Confederacy keeps winding up in the same spot.  It's more

interesting how the Left fell into this heresy.  Basically, in the '60s and

'70s, Nixon destroyed the Left with targeted assassinations of Black Panther

leadership, the War on Drugs, Cointelpro and other programs.  The apparatus

developed against democracy in Vietnam and Indonesia was reimported to

"deradicalize" urban resistance to the new oil imperialist/banking oligarchy

that you now see coming apart.  This is why, today, we have such high

incarceration rates: Jim Crow Part II.

With both parties now locked down by bribery, unions getting dismantled and

wages driven down, there was no room anymore for the Left outside academia and

to succeed on the Left there, you had to abandon claims on material wealth and

economic justice or you'd be dealt with too.  Courses on Locke, Rousseau and

Madison were shunted aside and restricted to graduate school - if available at

all - so no uppity undergrads would ever have the gall to attack undemocratic

militarism with democratic theory ever again.  That forced the Left into a

peculiarly sterile conversation about race and sex - not the underlying

sources of injustice there that could never be questioned but rather on

personal experience - to a fatalistically myopic degree.  The end result of

this is something called, bizarrely, Boasian antiracism

<https://policytensor.com/2019/10/10/what-in-the-name-of-the-lord-is-boasian-antiracism/>.

A similar defenestration of Christianity occurred on the right.  It's

considered "heresy" now to discuss the fact that Jesus wanted debt

cancellation - when in fact the heresy is failing to point out that he did and

that led to the crucifixion.

Blame it all on the "Me Decade" of the '70s.  Both the right and the left

turned toward the personal, especially personal narrative and confessional -

and new forms of communication gave them this power.  Both sides fell prey to

exaggerated doctrines of Deconstruction, elevating personal revelation above

law, constitution and Gospel truth enabling the "will-to-power" movements

common in fascism.  Out went universal meaning and in swept wishy-washy

relativism with "safe spaces" where nobody has to be overruled.

Charismatic evangelicals (read: segregationists) substituted personal

confession for Biblical truth.  Witness George Zimmerman claiming it was part

of God's plan he shoot an unarmed black boy walking home at night.  The Right

ate it up forgetting that

1)  No greater love has a man than he gives up his life to save another (*not*

takes another).

2)  Do not be overcome by evil but rather overcome evil with good.

3)  There is no fear in love.  Love casts out fear.

Zimmerman got out of the car that night armed with a gun because he was afraid

he might die and unafraid to kill - pretty much the opposite of a Christian.

But the anti-Christian charismatics ate it up in their culture war because he

hated the right people.

Of course, on the Left, these ironic contradictions abound too.

When I heard Bruce Jenner confessing happiness at no longer having to lie to

everybody, my first thought was, "He's admitting to cheating with steroids

like I'm positive almost everybody in track and field at the Olympic level has

been doing since the '50s?"

No.

My second thought was, "He's apologizing for giving people cancer and diabetes

by selling us Wheaties?"

Nope again.

He's transgendered.

Oh.

How was that ever my business?

What about all the people harmed by the cheating?

Oh, well…

In the future, we did get our fifteen minutes of fame and now we're all

trapped in our own personality cults.  We're one big self-published, unedited

echo chamber of one.  Ours is an era of personal narrative devoid of genuine

readers.  Reading takes kindness.  Reading takes reflection and reflection is

the enemy of sensationalist tweets.  (Got to move those ads.)  Bridging these

islands of self presupposes an objective reality that can sustain us while

we're "at sea" off your own island.  I think Percy referred to this as the

"intersubjective."

But politically speaking, no man is an island.  We can't be our own subjects

of one, which was Madison's point.  Substituting mob gangs does not give you a

better form of government.

We all fall prey to different heresies of perfection.  Tech bros seem to think

the world will become a perfect place with enough microchips thrown at it.

(I've debugged too much code to believe that one.)  The flip side of that is

nasty too.  Nostalgia is the enemy of forgiveness, which was a major theme of

Percy's.  Nostalgia imagines a perfect past.  If the past was once perfect -

or at least better - then the screwed up way things are today is unnecessary

and we need no forgiveness.  We just need to travel back in our memory to get

there.

But there's no one left showing us how fallible that memory is.  Those critics

disappeared in our flattened new perspective on life.

We shouldn't idealize the past or despise it.  Nor should we idealize the

future.  We should be, in our dire time of need, raging Pragmatists and

radicalized moderates.

Wade Riddick

------ Original Message ------

Received: Thu, 06 Aug 2020 10:43:12 AM EDT

From: Ernest Hutton <ehutton AT huttonassociates.com>

To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"

<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>

Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 162, Issue 11



Hazel Motes (in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood), searches for God by

railing against organized religion. But in doing so, he prophesizes the

authoritarian end-state pushed by today’s cancel culture:  ‘Where you come

from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where

you are is no good unless you can get away from it.’

O’Connor had it right, and is now a victim of her own perspicacity. This

reign of terror is destroying us all!

Ernie Hutton

Sent from my iPhone

Ernest W Hutton Jr. FAICP Assoc AIA

Hutton Associates Inc.

New York/ Westhampton

917.836.7902

17 Woodbridge Lane, Quiogue

Westhampton Beach NY 11978

>> On Aug 6, 2020, at 4:55 AM, Plemmons, Gregory <gregory.plemmons AT vumc.org>

wrote:

> 

> Patrick Connelly, a Percy scholar, spoke on Percy and race at one of the

former Walker Percy Weekends. He commonly referenced a quote from Percy (I

wish I knew the original source) about the eternal “problem of human frailty

trapped in historical circumstance”. That quote has stuck with me. It has

echoes of Pompeii, especially as we seem to be entering a whole new era of

cancel culture. The extreme left’s iconoclasm frightens me almost as much as

that of the Knotheads. I wish people could devote more energy inward toward

themselves and the current state of things. While dissecting the past will

always have some merit, what are we ourselves going to be judged on, fifty

years from now? Even five years from this pandemic? Percy was imperfect as the

best of us, but he and his family also slept in their attic for two weeks

after a bomb threat from the local Klan in 1969, after defending the removal

of the Confederate flag from the principal’s office of the local high

school.

>

> Zadie Smith took a stab recently attempting to answer the question of the

purpose of fiction. “Does it seem at all surprising in 2019...that we should

have this hypersensitivity?... Whereas many more material issues—economic

inequality, criminal justice reform, immigration—prove frighteningly

intractable, language becomes the convenient battlefield.”

>

> Apologies for the long-winded rant. I read the New Yorker article. It taught

me nothing new. Flannery was trapped as anyone. Her poor physical health is

often overlooked. Lupus is a horrible disease and there were little options

for treatment or even simple relief in her time. Again, “historical

circumstance”. I like to think if her disease hadn’t claimed her at 39,

her views might have evolved, too. I guess we’ll never know.

>

> Gregory Plemmons, MD

>

>> On Aug 5, 2020, at 7:17 PM, Charles Cowherd <charlescowherd AT hotmail.com>

wrote:

>> 

>> Just to weigh in on the Flannery O’Connor/ Paul Elie scrum.

>> At the seminary (Episcopal) that I attended, a professor had included the

short story “The Artificial N____” in his compendium of short stories

matched up to the preaching lectionary. (Flannery O’Connor fiction is VERY

popular in Episcopal circles.)

>> A draft copy somehow was made available to my fellow students, who opposed

the inclusion. There was a big townhall meeting, a student petition,

eventually the professor/author agreed to remove the story.

>> This was about 3 years ago.

>> I offer that up merely as another tiny data point in whatever this

particular moment is all about. I know that Walker Percy spoke on that short

story specifically but cannot find it, it’s in CONVERSATIONS with WALKER

PECY.

>> I do think that it’s a topic that we can discuss on this forum with care

and concern and kindness for one another.

>> Also, I have been reading THE NEW YORKER all my life (“a wonderful Yankee

magazine”- my Dad always would say!). Only with this article the magazine it

reveal how detached it is, as a source of journalism, from the world. It

reminded me of Percy’s dislike (too soft a word?) for Descartes. Instead,

Percy believed we are all embodied creatures, fallen and stumbling in the

world. Whereas the New Yorker writes an article with the title:  “How Racist

was Flannery O’Connor?” without any source of social location of time and

place.

>> All my best,

>> Charles Cowherd

>> [ WARNING : This email came from an external source. Please treat this

message with additional caution.]

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