Eyes Wide Shut: Compelled Speech: Imperiled Silence,
                                Nullified Conscience.

W H Auden’s term the ‘Age of Anxiety’ captures the mood in epochs of moral and material
insecurity. War, economic havoc, plagues along with disillusionment in political leadership and
distrust in institutions (e.g. the law), the demise of received religion and science bring about
uncertainty, existential angst and social anxiety.

An Age of Anxiety is often accompanied by a wave of pessimism and loss of confidence in society
and its institutions. As far back as the first and third centuries AD, Simone Pétrement reminds us,
the two orders of reality and value could be ruptured and inverted by denying the value of the world
and creation.

In our own times, the familiar cultural furniture is considered no longer trustworthy because it is not
what it was or seems because it’s veracity and efficacy (and thus value) has been debased
becoming a mere image/ eidolon/simulacrum/ marketing archetype hollowed out of its original
content and significance .

How do we respond to this cultural wasteland of alienation? Rather than adopting a formal
doctrine, the ‘mind’s eye’ takes flight, negating existent reality, which is a prison, a “dominion of
fear… distress and desolation”. By a mental turning inward, it seals itself off to attain a utopia
through superior self ‘knowledge and faith’, known as gnosis.

Our present cultural anxiety tracks with that of the 1st to 4th Centuries AD: Catastrophically the
moral, cultural and institutional aspects of Roman Imperium failed, following wars, plagues,
migrations, invasions, and religious collapse, along with economic problems. (This has been well
outlined by E R Dodds.)

Today’s echo of this cultural psychic anxiety from the first millennium has spawned a response that
assuages the existential and psychological angst. It is highly religious but is in the modern dress (or
more appositely, in drag) of its Gnostic forebear. In this, Marxism plays a crucial role.

The Gnostic hue or tendency is now expressed and evident as Woke Cultural Marxism, which has
been interpolated into our culture and its institutions. Marx was a gnostic adherent, just as Hegel
was influenced by Swabian Hermeticism, which Dr James Lindsay has recently brought to wider
attention. Marx sought to resolve the alienation of mankind in the world.

A consequence of the Marxist inversion of Hegel’s spirit, in favour of the material, is that Heaven
and earth were severed from one another, not unlike the way Plato’s forms (eidolon) are severed
from the imperfect reality they exemplified. This leaves only the world “Below”- the new heaven is
on earth in the form of Communism.

The world “above“ has been replaced by the hyper-real world of unmoored intellects or wits. E R
Dodds describes it as “…an hypostatisation, a dreamlike projection of …inner experience”, Or of
“Depth” or what St Augustine called the abyss of human interiority (abyssus humanae conscientiae),
An “ego tormented by longing for ultimate truth”- or in the terms of the retreating minds’ eye .
The familiar modern narcissism of “My Truth, My story...”

This can be seen as the modern manifestation of The Gnostic tendency, which is profoundly
religious; querying what comprises our human nature has become highly contested publically and
lies at the heart of the culture wars. Gnostic ideas, as a psychic response, go to ‘the ground of
being’, informing conscience, from which moral and ethical human agency derives its priorities and
impulse to action. Clearly, this is exemplified in present-day politics, particularly in the United
States.

Patrick Deneem argues that Progressive Liberalism (derived from 19th-Century Hegelianism and
Marxism via, in ultimo, American Marxism) condemns the world, society and its polity as wrong, if
not evil, and harmful, corrupting the innocent, and thus humanity as a whole. Progressive liberlism
believes Human nature can be transformed by mankind alone through superior knowledge (gnosis).
Because human nature is not fixed, society – our world – can remade as a new Socialist Mankind.
The gnostic tendency is also illustrated well by Transgender ideology, in which a person is considered
to be haplessly “flung into this world” and so is alienated. The person is believes, and is believed to
be by others, in exile in the wrong body: transitioning is the escape from this world into the hyper-
real through gnosis of what one’s true being is.

The religious telos of transformatory salvation helps explain why transgender is such a hard fought-
over matter, and why it excites threats and violence. It is in ultimo fundamentally an existential
religious make-or-break matter. Denial of a transgender person’s identity is seen as an existential
threat.

Escaping this world into the values of the hyper-real comes with an evil corollary: Simone
Pétrement sets out that the consequences of giving the hyper-real priority over matters of this world
entail the devaluing of this world:

…the point of view of a value, a good that is above all things, that is foreign, like the God of
the Gnostics, that is finally absolute, apart, is in the end to justify all injustice, all lies, and all
evil from the moment they begin to exist. (A Separate God: The Origins and Teachings of
Gnosticism, 1984/1990, P31)

That is why free speech, freedom of conscience, Western Cultural values generally, and the rule of
law are shouted down and cancelled by the Woke, who claim to possess superior gnosis. It also
explains why this mode of thinking resulted in such a high body count from November 1917 onward;
something the World Economic Forum is on track to further experiment with.

Counterpoised to these tendencies is the Liberal Conservative- and traditional- view that human
nature is fixed but can be controlled and civilised by mankind in Lockean civil society. It takes the
view that we are what we are, and each of us bears both good and evil within us. Suffering is an
inevitable part of existence, and we must deal with reality as it is, seeing it clearly in order to
mitigate its adverse effects and problem solve.

Here again the ancient world has its echoes in the present. Jerusalem and Athens have been the
foundation of the West: The logos of creation ran in tandem with that of the logos of intellect;
however, the influence of third great city of the ancient world, Alexandria, the source of Hermetic
and gnostic ideas, has gone into periods of abeyance and at present lies dormant in the shadows,
but it is never lost. James Lindsay notes that our epoch has seen the flood of Alexandrian gnosis
surge back in.
.
                                                                ******

But how do these broad developments affect our daily lives, and what are the legal ramifications?
The mundane is far from being exempt from the alienation and anxiety of the modern world. A
simple ephemeral workplace example can serve to illustrate the infiltration of progressive liberal
ideas, the polarisation they bring, and their consequences for individual consciences, which is no
small matter.

Thursday 18 May 2023 was designated as an ‘Anti-Bullying day’ (that is, not “Against Bullying” or
“Stop Bullying”), an event taking its cue from the US social justice catchphrase “Anti-Racism”. The
Discussion here centres on an HR Memo announcing the event which compelled a dress code, and
considers what that entails.

Cleaved onto “anti-bullying” were the social justice terms ‘Diversity’ and ‘LGBT/trans’. The
grouping can be seen as rhetorical, as an alchemic ‘Motte and Bailey’ linkage is in play. By
conforming to the dress code, one is considered to subscribe to the notions of Diversity and
LGBT/trans also. A question arises: is assent to one assent to all?

It is generally agreed that workplace bullying is a bad thing as a matter of moral and social common
sense, because it is capriciously disruptive and destructive of employment relations. Bullying can
be terminal for the career of the victim, it may lead to mental breakdowns, health issues, financial
privation, the loss of home or the necessity of moving out of town.

Diverse people and LGBT folk are clearly fall into the class of people in the workplace and are
encompassed by the lead concept of anti-bullying, which makes sense because people simplicter
should not be bullied at work. Yet the terms ‘Diversity’ and ‘transgender’ bring with them a raft of
Underlying ideas about the world that derive from Marxist identity politics ideology, and involve
core beliefs that are partly gnostic. Hence the mention above of the alchemic ‘Motte and Bailey’, in
which terms are magically fused together that are far from socially accepted or agreed upon.

One view of the HR Memo, albeit a negative one, was that it used bullying as a means to engraft
Woke or Marxist tropes and seek agreement on all of the points set out by insisting on dress code
compliance.

An alternative, positive view, is that If this effect were unintentional, the HR Memo shows how an
ideology (in this case a Marxist Woke one in the form of modern gnostic tropes) may parasitically
permeate a public discourse, and change its character from the inside out.

Employees were compelled to wear an item of clothing coloured pink, preferably a
shirt. Compulsion effected, despite the lack of consensus or even consultation, public assent to the
terms ‘diversity’ and ‘transgender’. Indeed these are disputed at the fundamental level of beliefs
that are at the ‘ground of our being.’ There is clearly a conflict of world views involved here. Many
oppose cultural Marxist views, and its Gnosticism has been considered by normative beliefs to be a
heresy, which exposes the fundamental nature of the issues at stake.

The compulsory dress code, at the same time, contravened the freedoms of belief, conscience,
speech and expression set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The signalling- was a
compelled form of speech by symbol- it gave assent to all the terms grafted onto ‘Anti-Bullying’ in
the HR Memo.

Compelled speech is on the pathway to the collective singing and slogan shouting in unison of
totalitarian regimes, and clearly has an authoritarian character to it.

Opposed to compelled speech, and in addition to free speech, is the overlooked right to silence that
exists in both the criminal and civil law, as a civil liberty and a human right which is given legal fiat.
In criminal law the right to silence protects the accused against self-incrimination. It also, as was
tested in the United States supreme Court in the 1950’s, extends to a person not being forced to
betray his or her conscience. Even Queen Elzabeth I declared she “would not open the windows
into men’s souls.” An eminent psychoanalyst, Joost Meerloo, writes that “a legal attack on the
right to remain silent “can become a serious invasion of human privacy and reserve. Undermining
the value of the personality and of private conscience…”Meerloo 129/1956.

Meerloo gives the example of the betraying friendship, which he ranks as a highly conscientious
matter: If “people are compelled to betray their inner moral feelings of friendship, … then that very
law undermines the integrity of the person, and coercion and menticide begin.” 1956/130.
‘Menticide’ is the destructive process of compelling and overbearing a person’s thought, speech,
will and conscience.

Menticide is evident in the concepts of “right think” and “group think”, by which people are
expected to hold only those opinions deemed proper to the collective and authority. Of the same
order is “hate speech”- a collectivist social justice term and not a jurisprudential one- which
envisages criminalisation and legal prosecution for speech and thus matters of conscience. These
are clearly neither matters of ‘Diversity’ nor ‘Inclusion’ but instead of anti- humanism.

Freedom of conscience requires, first, the right to withhold one’s private thoughts. A right to
silence in our civil law is guaranteed by virtue of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
1966 (ICCPR 1966), which was incorporated into our law by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
Secondly, the right to privacy under ICCPR 1966, Art 17 was re-incorporated into our law by section
3 (b) of the Privacy Act 2020. Privacy, as with freedom of speech, goes directly to freedom of
conscience, and as Meerloo says, mental freedom – that is, the right to think (ICCPR Art 18 &19), to
verify and to choose which is the best and most truthful is inherent in the freedom of conscience.
Coherence to reality, in contrast to the mental constructs of the sealed mind in negation of reality, is
Implied intellectually, and expressly accepted in common sense.

Freedom of conscience enables and is the springboard of our human agency. It takes us to the
ground of our being. The contrary is the ‘Womb state’ or ‘totalitaria’. Meerloo notes that “when
people silence their conscience and compromise for the sake of convenience, at that moment they
begin to be disloyal to themselves.” (1956:P221).

That disloyalty and its consequences are set out by Czselaw Milosc in Captive Minds, Alexandr
Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago and recently by Rod Dreher in Live not by Lies.
These points regarding freedom of conscience clearly drill down to religious considerations and
involve a contest about our being and the world. In the gnostic view, which Rousseau and Marx
expressed best, the world is evil and bad and we are haplessly “flung” into it, alienated (e.g. in the
wrong body) and need to transition out of it.

Hegel, inverting Marx, argued that instead of a spiritual-cosmic alteration we can have an earthly
one. The Cultural Marxist Woke gnostic agenda, by possessing superior insight and knowledge
(gnosis), claims we can solve the evil and alienation of mankind by an endless critique of everything
that exists, thereby pulling everything down in the world.

However, it is clear to many that further destruction and pulling things down does not conduce or
add to human well-being.

Gnostic belief defies and negates reality, and seeks its destruction It turns into a sealed world of the
mind, or mere “wit” as Alexander Pope put it. The products of the gnostic flight are the
ruminating mental constructs which end with the Parody of the tragic clown Pierrot, in the
dystopian man, the Joker from Batman. To give one recent example, Dylan Mulvaney, as the
transgender face of Bud Light’s advertising campaign, parodies Audrey Hepburn and young female
‘bimbos’ generally, while the heavily made-up drag queens in the advertisements are gross
parodies of women.

Verbal constructs abound. Verbal alchemy is seen not in terms of argument but instead of
denunciation, as Plotinus had noted in The Enneads, catch phrases such as ’white privilege’,
‘systemic racism’, ‘colonial trauma’ and the perennial ‘Patriarchy’. Ibrahim X Kendi falls into this
trap when he declares ‘when I see an institution I see racism’ or systemic racism. But he does not
see.

The modern Gnostic’s eyes are wide shut. This is sitting in Plato’s cave with the fire out and
the lights off.

As J S Mill says, free speech, involving thought and conscience, either confirms an opinion or falsifies
it, and that is a social good. Compulsion of speech, thought and conscience precludes the corrective
to errant ideas and group insanity. But as Lenin famously asked, what is to be done?

G R Hill.
Nelson
2023/06/23-24, 27

Justin Trudeau's teenage- I- hate- Deplorables- Tantrum

 

 

 

 

 

The Australian Spectator carries an excellent analysis of the PM's overreach. (https://spectator.com.au/2022/...)

The overreach into a donor to the Trucker's Convoy by private citizens- treating them akin to terrorist enablers- is fetched as it is disturbing. Then to threaten to nationalise the tow truck industry.

The Canadian Charter of Rights, as with our Bill of Rights Act 1990, has a justified limitations clause. The limitation has to be measured against the rights and freedoms in a Democratic Society. The invoking of the emergency powers, in my opinion, falls foul because the limitation of and suspension of civil rights are contrary to the norms of a Democratic society.

The incursion into banking of private citizens and reporting them to the police and secret service are ominous and perhaps designed to intimidate the public; and as has been said here in NZ, "to change behaviours." Again this is an incursion into economic rights.

Certain Canadian Civil Liberties organisations have spoken out against the invoking of emergencies powers as the predicate for them does not exist. So far, of course, we have not a peep out of eh Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Two clips are worth attention. First from Laura Ingram: https://youtu.be/fEA6f9pcCAM. She has a portion of a 2020 address by a UN Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, who sets out the tests, or framework for an incursion into civil liberties (at 16 seconds ff.) She says that in the limitation of human rights there must be (1) a clear need; (2) the measure must be proportionate to the need; and (3) there must be a time limit. The shrinking of civil society must otherwise be avoided.

Secondly, Jordan Peterson on the Trudeau teenage- I- hate deplorables-tantrum and related childish default thinking, which may also be a problem here in NZ (Kindness and empathy aka therapeutic Socialism) and with liberals/leftists in general: https://youtu.be/qfDGAvQhd6o.

GRH

“Sleepers Awake:” The Woke Threat to The Rule of Law

 

 

(The Court of Chancery, London.)

 I wrote this in 2019 and following the Carl Rittenhouse verdict it is apposite to publish this article.  Earlier articles in this Blog have tracked the demise of the rule of law in the United States and its  politicisation (Flynn's case); arbitrary treatment (6 Jan internees) and trial by leftist Mob Media. 

Further, there has been the  interpolation of social justice and thus Marxist nostrums- per-determination of guilt or liability owing to membership in an identity group or class and collective culpability arising from the oppressor v Oppressed paradigm,  which does not and cannot  interface with the rule of  law  based on individual rights. Critical race theory seems to loom behind the Judge Callinicos case.

Thomas Sowell has well addressed  the obsession with justice as a sole social norm.  Mr Myaorkis of the DHS recently said that people crossing the USA's southern border needed justice but this is at expense of the weighing of competing rights and persons  that justice must involve.  The obsession is conducive to greater injustice and social unfairness.

                                                                ****

The Rule of Law  (RoL) is one of the important  gears that mesh with several others to form the machinery of Western civilisation.  Niall Ferguson in the West and the Rest has called it one of “the  Killer Apps" accounting for the success of the West and why  societies in the West that are  sought after by  people from elsewhere who wish to live in them.  The RoL gives certain efficacy to the working of our society in terms of commercial, political and social relations.   It encompasses political and legal values including human rights.  Societies and cultures without the RoL, or with a severely fractured one,   have issues with corruption, lawlessness, and clan-like violence; possessing arbitrary, relativistic and unpredictable legal systems; the serious loss of justice for the individual ; and political issues in which there is little or no trust between governed and governors.

The RoL in the West has also been eroded by indifference, ignorance and ineptitude.    But for some time it has been under siege from without by Neo-Marxism and its derivative, Cultural Marxism.  The nadir, as we shall discuss shortly has been reached and evinced at Harvard in May this year where mental ‘trauma’ and the “oppression” of feelings predominate over and trump the RoL.

Increasingly often Instances of  the  detaching or  casting off of the  RoL in favour of an ideological Neo Marxist religion have featured in the media.  We turn to examine some of these for what they disclose about the state of the RoL.

First, violence is now seen and  justified in relativistic terms.  Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor in defending  ANTIFA violence in August 2018 could unabashedly state: “ Fighting hate is right.  And in a clash [physical violence]  between hate and those who oppose it, those who oppose it are right...It is not about being right in the eyes of the law, but you also have to know what’s wrong and  right and immoral, in a good and evil sense.”  This is akin to a religious fiat for violence: violence is given the ‘Green Light’ if your relativist group or tribal narrative defines a term like ‘hate’ and says that it is wrong.  First, this is an indication of  a loss of a socially accepted standard.   Secondly,  what we are observing here is a tribal self-defining James Comey like “higher calling”, something normally the exclusive  province of religion; and in this  instance with echoes of the medieval ideas of the “Just War”.    

Secondly,  a similar  detachment was seen few months later in the abrogation of the presumption of innocence in the nomination hearings for Justice Kavanaugh to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.  The hearing’s process is worthy of a book in itself.  Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly are said to be writing one.    Saliently,  the Judge’s detractors were ready to cut loose due process, fairness, the presumption of innocence, equality before the law and the principles of the law of evidence.    Emily Yoffe put the issue well in an article in the Atlantic (3 October 2018) when she said:

But when a woman, in telling her story, makes an allegation [of sexual assault or rape] against a specific man, a different set of obligations kick in.

Even as we must treat accusers with seriousness and dignity, we must hear out the accused fairly and respectfully, and recognise the potential lifetime consequences that such an allegation can bring.  If believing the women is the beginning and the end of the search for truth, then we have left the realm of justice for religion”

Thirdly, in mid-May of this year, a further assault on the RoL was directed at Harvard Law Professor Ronald S Sullivan, who is African American, and director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute.  He and his wife (also a lecturer in the Harvard Law School) were also the first African-Americans to become Harvard Deans of Faculty.  He has come under assault by students after having been asked to be part of Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein’s legal team.  This was a role outside of his Harvard duties.  Joanna Williams in Spiked (14 May 2019) had this to say:

 

“Unusually,  Sullivan’s ‘trauma-inducing’ sins against the sensibilities of undergraduates did not occur in the lecture theatre or indeed anywhere on campus. He neither misgendered students nor told them to sort out their own choice of Halloween costume. No, his crime has simply been to do his job.

Sullivan practices law; the knowledge and experience he gains from being at the forefront of his profession are passed on to students fortunate enough to be studying at Harvard’s elite law school. Over the course of an impressive career, he has advised Barack Obama, represented the family of Michael Brown in their suit against the city of Ferguson, Missouri, and overturned more than 6,000 wrongful convictions. Only it is the very business of the law, the need to defend people accused of crimes, the need to assume defendants are innocent until proven guilty, that has proved too much for students to stomach.

…The public denunciation of Weinstein ignited the #MeToo movement. For some of Harvard’s students – and staff – Sullivan’s decision to act in defence of Weinstein is not a legal duty and a professional responsibility, but a moral outrage that needs to be stopped. They have started petitions, held demonstrations and conducted rallies calling for his dismissal”
(Spiked, 14 May 2019)

The fundamental legal principle involved was a defendant’s right to have legal counsel of his or her choosing and to be represented at trial.   Sullivan’s critics, having already decided the defendant must be guilty, extend that guilt to anyone who agrees to defend him in court.  In New Zealand legal counsel is acting for Benton Tarrant, just as  Professor Sullivan was acting for a defendant by assisting his legal team.  In the present climate of opinion at Harvard, the defence counsel at the Nuremburg Trials would not have stood a chance.  That illustrates how ludicrous and pernicious the present climate of opinion is for eh RoL.    Criminal law can be difficult and the rules of evidence need to be properly understood.    A defendant faces the power and deep pockets of the State.   Professor Sullivan had neither broken the law nor acted in a reprehensible manner towards students.   The professor could not be removed from his Law Faculty job, so his role as a Faculty Dean was put in issue.  The professor and his wife (the collateral damage) were subsequently sacked, as Faculty Deans of Winthrop House, a hostel for undergraduates, by the university's Dean, who had capitulated to students’ alleged trauma and mental health risk- all without any evidence no doubt-  induced by the professor’s mere presence. 

Joanna Williams goes on to expand on the issue of mental trauma:

“Danukshi Mudannayake, the student who has led the campaigning, argues that Sullivan’s decision to represent Weinstein is ‘not only upsetting, but deeply trauma-inducing’, and it shows he ‘does not value the safety of the students he lives with’. [H]e cannot simultaneously hold that role while still having a charade of saying that he can actually protect the integrity of his students.’ Kacey E Gill, president of the Association of Black Harvard Women, said she was relieved and happy to hear of Sullivan’s departure, but added ‘I wish that it hadn’t taken so long’ or that it ‘required so many students to put their mental health, well being, and potentially even their futures on the line in order to get that change to occur’.

Students have come to accept a ludicrously wide definition of trauma. There is not the slightest suggestion that Sullivan poses any danger either to the students he comes into contact with or anyone else. Sullivan does not stand accused of rape or sexual assault. The threat students think he poses is not physical, but mental. Students have come to believe that ‘trauma’ occurs not as a result of something catastrophic happening to them, nor even from having hateful words directed at them, but from the mere presence of another person in their vicinity. Even this understates their bizarrely elastic understanding of trauma. Harvard is not offering refuge to Weinstein, the rapacious folk monster of our times, but employing, in a professional capacity, his lawyer. Yet Sullivan’s presence is considered by the students to be sufficient to create a ‘toxic climate’.

All of this begs the question: where are the adults? “

(Spiked 14 May 2019)

It does indeed.  The RoL should not be set aside because of an ill-defined student misperception of what trauma (not  classified in DSM V)  is, which is said  to come about from an appointment unrelated to the Dean’s role Winthrop House.   An instance of purity in danger by contamination of a human agent.   If the university authorities at Harvard do not comprehend the RoL then what hope is there for other institutions?  This not the real world but again a  trespass into the realm of religion in the Cultural Marxist self-fulfilling oppressor/oppressed dialectic of the Woke: the dialectic is the Truth and the True Way.  The Rule of Law is based on human standards iterated and proven fit for use, over time.  That was the approach, Daniel J Boorstein tells us, of William Blackstone who abhorred Enlightenment idealist theory as the basis of practical day to day law.   The Woke are divorced from the past and the world of practical experience having a “Cloistered” tunnel vision of a future religious ideal.  The RoL may not be perfect but it is far better than a capricious judgment based on feelings,  idealistic predetermination based on  some ineffable “higher calling” and a misconceived fetish of trauma.

What is shown by the university’s response, and by the student’s errant protest is a woeful arrogant ignorance of a vital facet, of the  underlying legal principles of a free and civil society.   These principles of the RoL are  then substituted by a visceral  religious judgment by the irrelevant  health concerns of   students’ who are unrelated  to, and have no proximity  to the Professor’s defence counsel role.  The students religious tremors, all derived from the numinous and  subjective mysterium tremendum of feeling, trumped the  RoL.  

To put the matter on a different footing, how could Harvey Weinstein , if  sued in tort by the students, have foreseen the students’ trauma?  The question does not bear a second glance.  Williams adds to the legal principles at stake:

“ Acquiescing to students campaigning against Sullivan has consequences beyond the university.  It also calls into question our understanding of fundamental principles of justice, most especially the idea that those accused are innocent until proven guilty and so, in order for justice to be best served, require a rigorous defence. Students crying trauma at Sullivan first assume Weinstein’s guilt, then mistake a defence of Weinstein for a defence of his alleged crimes. They assume defending an alleged rapist is a defence of rape. Again, where are the adults to tell them they are wrong?

(Spiked 14 May 2019)

RoL principles must prevail over the ignorance of the Neo Marxist/Cultural Marxist Woke: the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the principle that justice to be done needs to be seen to be done are fundamental, which was not the case, to give a historical example,  of the trial of the Regicides, or if you prefer Geoffrey Robertson QC’s term, the Tyrannicides,  of Charles the  First.   Is lynching, hanging and drawing and quartering before the University of  Harvard’s  Registry or Faculty of Law preferable?  On this last point Joanna Williams rightly concludes:

It is in the interests of everyone to have justice done, and that means a trial with a proper legal defence. Harvard’s decision comes just a day after Sullivan announced that he would be leaving Weinstein’s defence team. Yet the better the defence, the more secure a conviction. If due process cannot take place, then we risk criminals going unpunished and the innocent being incarcerated. Cries of trauma must not be allowed to undermine the legal system.

(Spiked 14 May 2019)

Yet nothing is being done about this urgent issue by the very people who should be the most active.   The guardians of the Rule of Law in the current freedom of speech issues presently before us are silent.     The New Zealand Law Society last year censored in its publication Law Talk citations to Jordan Peterson.  The Feminist Judgments project, was given print space in Law Talk and  went by without hardly any notice from the profession despite its having considerable RoL implications.  The Feminist judgments project in terms of the RoL may well be an oxymoron given feminism’s debt to Neo-Marxism which underwrites identity politics and ideas of intersectionality.   That is an article for another time.   My own experience of approaching two senior members of the  NZLS Privacy and Human Rights Committee on a Rule of Law matter was met with no reply.  The abrogation of concern is woeful.  Has the  Law Society turned to the new religion too with its Equity Charter and become absorbed and oblivious in the new faith too?

Graham Hill MA (Hons) Ll.B (Hons)
Nelson.

29 May 2019

ORANGA TAMARIKI: THE RULE OF LAW IN FAVOUR OF SOCIAL jUSTICE

 

 

 

 

Both Karl du Fresne  and Chris Trotter have blogged on the Hawkes Bay Case of  a young girl about who should have a parenting order for her and whether this should proceed on the basis of culture or race.  I see it as a disopuite between a collectivist approach and an individual rights and interests of the child.

https://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-disturbing-case-of-moana-and-judges.html

https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2021/08/labour-must-uphold-rule-of-law.html

 I concur with Gary Judd  who blogged into Karl du Fresne's article.  He makes the point  that s 4 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 enshrines the rule of law.  That is correct,  but how?  There is one legal pundit, with some influence,   who maintains  that the s4 provision is merely declaratory and of no substantive effect. I have tried to litigate it has substantive effect but the LCRO was not up to the task.

I blogged  the following as a comment:

 "My unfortunate experience, and as a former lawyer, is that lawyers can be involved in breaches of the rule of law. The Nuremberg laws were also laws of the state and the officer corps of the SS was largely made up of lawyers.   

There is no magical incantation (though pronouncing the words "rule of law" might approach such an incantation) or wand waving that makes probable lawyers as guardians of the rule of law. If it were so the Neo Marxist "feminists judgments project, with its inter sectional mummery, would have been canned long ago. Also there would not have been censorship in Law Talk of Jordan Peterson. The rule of law, by the way, is not, as Professor Niall Ferguson says, the rule of lawyers. Yet it is a good start.

There is a greater dynamic at play here. It also features in the "hate speech' proposals. The present rule of law system is based on individual rights not collectivist Neo Marxist ones. Social Justice is NOT legal justice as it is an imposition of prejudice and liability. There is no possible interface. Woke Social justice determines in advance by one's membership to a group one's guilt (sub nom "privilege')  for example. 

 I know of Judge Callinicos, who is a competent and very experienced family law judge as he was as a practitioner, who would have focused on the interests of the child which are paramount, not an a priori presumption pertaining to CRT.  

 [It is simply astonishing two other judges who should have known better but obviously did not decide to write to Judge Callinicos. If members of the Judiciary are not up to speed with the rule of law, and what it entails,  then we do have a serious problem.   It is a problem of professional and intellectual decadence.]

What we have here is a striking example of the corruption of the Clerisy (as with the MoEd and possibly MSD)- which has adopted critical race theory- and raises the issue, which I raised in my submission on hate speech, has our current weltanschauung been subverted and over thrown by Neo Marxism? 

Most lawyers are anti intellectual and won't see the issue as it really is, as such, and that  their role of guardians of the rule of law is in question if not jeopardy.    There would have been a lawyer arguing for the social justice CRT position."

Teen Vogue becomes Archilochus' Hedgehog - Marx as Mephistophles has all the answers.

                                                                             

The parable of the Hedgehog and the Fox strikes again.

Marxism and Neo Marxism critical theory is the Hedgehog of the one "Big Idea" that explains the whole world.  In doing so it over abstracts reality, deletes inconvenient nuance and simplifies and dumbs down reality and the explanations of reality.  In dumbing down society it dumbs down the education system and its graduates.  Instead of cogent and clear argued propositions based in  reality, we end up with fuzzy euphemisms and feelings and barely understood or  visceral  Marxist  pabulum. 

 

 As Professor Black has said (https://thecritic.co.uk/oxfords-civil-war/)  that some academics seek 'to reshape in terms of a set of values and methods equating to argument by assertion and proof by sentiment: “I feel therefore I am correct”, and it is apparently oppression to be told otherwise.'  In a piece on Brexit he noted   "Both authors are reductionists: they do not deal in complexity but explain by assertion, and the assertion is both clear and foolish: Empire is not to be judged by Brexit, and vice versa."

The Big Idea has swamped this teenager writing for Teen Vogue.  She is quite uninformed: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/06/teen-vogue-gen-z-mobilize-build-socialist-future-no-future-capitalism/   As one comment  has it her subjective experience of one year trumps 150 years of human cumulative historical experience of misery, oppression, death and the  intellectual analysis of a failed ideology.  To recast Professor  Black-  Marxist  socialism is not to be judged by a year of Covid-19

There is a serious intellectual credibility problem not confronted by the devotees and believers of Marx, which  brings us to an aspect of Marx that the left, and especially the academic left, brush over and that is Marx's psychological or spiritual state of mind which infuses all his written work.   

This is well illustrated in  Paul Kengor's The Devil and Karl Marx.  The book is quite annoying in places with its sotto voce colloquial comments which mars what is an informative good read.

Marx's indebtedness to Goethe's Dr Faust is seriously evident and mainly to the character Mephistopheles, whom  Marx seemed to identify with.  Mark had  wanted  foremost to be  a poet and remained throughout his life  an avid reader and reciter of poetry.  He could recite vast passages of Faust and mainly the passage of Mephistopheles

The UK academic, Robert Payne,  has done probably the best literary analysis of Marx in two books  of 1968 and 1971. .   Payne cogently argues that there is a direct linkage from Marx's own disturbing literary poetic output to his political output in the  Communist Manifesto 1848 and on.  

The poetic is Romanticism imbued with the Faustian contract.  Marx's seriously disturbed and demented thought is evoked in calling for the total destruction of humankind in Oulanem.   In which contrary to normal literary convention has  not one good character or redemption, merely  annihilation.  Then in  a mix of a kind of Faustian Walpurgis night, there is the  hellish,  frenzied violin playing in The Player, entailing  murder with the sword of the Devil, obtained in  a pact with the Devil and the player's (Marx?) own death after running through the  observer (Marx's wife Jenny according to Payne and Kengor) with the  Devil's sword.  Suicide and annihilation has its iteration in Nocturnal Love.  Kengor notes:

“...the lovers end up once again consuming poisoned cups and consumed by the flames, which they sink into as disembodied spirits. Here again, we are assaulted with violence, grief, despair, pale maidens, doomed souls, and fire, fire, fire”

And where  does this take us?

“And what is the destination of these souls mingled together and about to fly away? That is, the soul of he, the dark one, glowing with fire, and she, on fire with grief and trembling beneath his breath and pressed violently against his heart? That is, she, the blood of youth, yet pale, and he, of glowing fire, whose soul she has drunk from? To where are they flying? The answer, as usual with Marx, was terror and death, and flames, flames, flames—roaring flames! ”

A near end stanza recites, as there is no Prince of Light,  with Marx as the Devil:

“Darling, thou hast drunk of poison,

And now thou must depart with me.

Now the night has fallen,

There is no longer any day.”

Kengor cites Payne's observation:

“It is an ominous and deeply disturbing poem,” concedes Payne, “for a man does not write such things unless he is on the verge of madness or despair.”

The connection to the political writings is set out and the passage is worthy of setting out in full.  Kenor citing Payne says:  

“Oulanem sees himself as the agent of destruction, as the judge who condemns and then acts as executioner, confident that he is in possession of the powers of God to annihilate the universe. Men, in that universe, are no more than apes of a cold God. Payne viewed this Marxist vision as directly transferable to Marx’s philosophical vision. He perceived the dialogue between Oulanem and the other characters as assuming the form of a classic Marxist “dialectical struggle” that is “never completely resolved, precisely akin to the Marxist ideological vision of the world.”

“Payne thus affirmed that the speech of Oulanem is important to understanding Marx’s ideas: “Combat or death, bloody struggle or annihilation.” He notes that in the Communist Manifesto, “we hear the same strident voice calling for a war to the death between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, a merciless battle with no quarter given by either side. It is important to observe that Marx’s philosophy of the destruction of classes has its roots in romantic drama.”

It manifests itself: 

““Marx loved the line pronounced by Mephistopheles in Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” As Payne notes, Marx’s drama Oulanem is an extended improvisation of that theme, a line that Marx himself used in other writings, quoting it with relish, for instance, in The Eighteenth Brumaire. ”

An important aspect that is relevant today to critical theory is the notion of criticism to destroy by a faulty paradigm leading to a errant judgment rather than obtaining  a fair, balanced or realistic  evaluation and analysis of things:  There are no "pros" only "cons" and thus destruction.  Marx had no qualms- and neither did Che Guevea or Pol Pot-  that force and destruction would be required in  effecting revolution and imposing the new Heaven on Earth- "a merciless battle with no quarter given by either side".

It is a poignant irony that the Frankfurt  School, the neo Marxist strain that we see  today that  it  should  emanate from Goethe University from which the contemporary critical theory is derived.

Its source lay  in Biblical Criticism and Marx's criticism of religion. Noteworthy  Marx, in his introduction to “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,”  The essay Kegor says uses the word criticism some 29 times but Marx was empathic on its purpose:

“Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics”

The Communist Manifesto advises that  criticism is a tool:  "But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society.  Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class." (emphases added).       “The criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.” according to “Peter Thompson, “Karl Marx, part 1: Religion, the wrong answer to the right question,” The Guardian, April 4, 2011. 

Kengor mentions an 1843 letter to Arnold Ruge, where  Marx advocated  for “the ruthless criticism of all that exists."   Ruthless criticism is   succeeded by ruthless abolition and the word appears 32 times in the  Communist Manifesto.  Lenin celebrated  Marx for subjecting everything to criticism,  to abolishing and critical reshaping. (Kengor p720) 

Ruthless criticism, and ruthless abolition bring us back to the Mephistophelian Marx and Dr Faust and Mephistopheles admonitions. 

“He was especially fond of Mephistopheles’s line from Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”   This is no surprise; it reflects the very thinking of the man who in letters called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists,” who in the Manifesto declared that communism seeks to “abolish the present state of things,” and who at the close of the Manifesto called for “the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”  (Kengor p98)

It was just not Marx's writings that disclose the disturbed nature and nihilism of Marx but people around him were aware of it too.  His father thought he was possessed of Demons; his wife and friends likewise. Paul Johnson in Intellectuals has  talked about Marx's unbridled rancour, his  need  to dominate and bullying  abusive manner.  Marx's antisemitism and racism pass without mention from the current racially sensitive left.   

Is this really the promising ground for a  social philosophy a means of properly  looking at the  world in a  balanced way factually and in terms of mental balance?  Its historical  track record of catastrophe, oppression,  suffering and slaughter - the no quarter given- are of the  most profound in all of human history.

For Teen Vogue none of this is a problem and it would have us believe it is a promising philosophy.  It is Hell and Marx is playing the fiddle. 

Graham Hill

8 August 2021

Nelson

Dr Anton on gas lighting and propaganda fallacies: Michel Knowles’ Speechless- “the euphemism mill.”

 

 

 

Both these writers tell us things worth knowing and our own "Dear Government" may also use them from time to time.  Best to be able  to pick it out and know what is going on

 

The US Democrats and the left, however,  seem more sophisticated and adept.   Despite that we should know about them.  Being informed is half the battle.

 These help us steer through the fog of "gas lighting", spin and propaganda.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/

 Next, Michael Knowles book Speechless (2021) is a fascinating must  read.  One finds out how indebted to Niccolo Machiavelli Antonio Gramsci was, and that does bear thinking about.

 Importantly , Mr Knowles’s section of the "Euphemism Mill"- where terms of language are changed into normative no-fault implied terms of jargon or PC speak.. 

For example, the therapeutic "youths involved in justice" rather than youth offenders or delinquents, exempts personal responsibility or culpability.  It is a matter of cosmic social justice. 

The idea of euphemism mills is usefully drawn from Stephen Pinker's  The Blank State.  As Knowles relates it, the new jargon terms become trite and we always see- even at the outset- the truth that they seek to hide or fudge.

The human mind has the capability to defy reason but it always breaks free.   This is also the case for what Michael Anton relates as well 

Alexander Pope in 1709 had already figured this out as his idea of ‘sense’ included common sense, knowledge, proportion  and judgment which was a foil to ‘wit’, the minds thought.

 The tale of the 'King's New Suit of Clothes' remains apposite.

Knowles, like Dr Anton, usefully  point out on free speech issues  where conservatives often   fall into the  traps and lose the argument.

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