ICYMI (Philosophy) Daily Digest report

There is total continuity from the early 1970s dawn of so-called “modern American conservativism” and today’s Republican crime syndicate.

With the Heritage Foundation back in the news because of this, https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/project-2025-creators-hail-supreme-court-immunity-ruling-as-coming-of-2nd-american-revolution/, I thought it might be helpful to put the organization in context. 1/

Modern American conservatism fuses ideas from libertarianism, Chicago-School free-market economics, and white Christian evangelicalism, with the goal of reversing the New Deal and the post-World-War-II civil rights movement. 2/

Modern American conservatism approves only a very small range for government action. Government may act to maintain order, stability, and certain kinds of hierarchy, and only it if does not encroach upon the prerogatives of appropriate churches (white evangelical Christian ones and those with comparable tenets and practices), acceptable families (heterosexual, two-parent, patriarchal), and the free market (capitalist). 3/

Modern American conservatives believe in inherent authority of the church, the patriarchal Christian family, and an unfettered market. The view also rests on a belief about the incompetence of government. Government is too removed, too big, too clumsy for tasks other than minimal order-keeping. When government does properly maintain order and stability, individuals and nongovernmental organizations can attend to all the other tasks government might attempt but is likely to botch. 4/

Meanwhile, in 1973 Paul Weyrich co-founded the Heritage Foundation. The other founders were Joseph Coors and Edwin Feulner. From inception, the mission was to unite the push for a pro-business unregulated market and promotion of white Christian patriarchal social policies. 13/

Here’s a good article on how Weyrich used white supremacist reactions to school desegregation to bring white Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals to political activism. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133 14/

Just as there was continuity to that point, so too is there continuity from the Reagan era through to today’s Heritage Foundation, Trump, and the Republican crime syndicate. The through lines are insistence that white Christian patriarchal churches and unregulated business set political and social policy and the elevation of the heterosexual, patriarchal family over all other intimate arrangements. The strategy has been the same all along… 18/

Whether you date American “conservatism” to the founding, the Civil War and its aftermath, or to the modern form that reacted explicitly to the New Deal and the post-WWII civil rights movement, I find it useful to be aware that the fight for secular constitutional democracy, rule of law, and a government that authentically serves the general welfare has been long and ongoing. 20/

On the blog today, Elliot Porter discusses the phenomenology of manic episodes, and how this affects the sense of urgency around one's practical reasons. @philosophy #philosophy

https://imperfectcognitions.blogspot.com/2024/07/agency-and-manic-point-of-view.html

Wonderful post by friend and colleague Elliot Porter, on agency and the manic point of view: https://imperfectcognitions.blogspot.com/2024/07/agency-and-manic-point-of-view.html @philosophyofpsychiatry @philosophy

The lake
(on my way back from voting)

Nog twee nachtjes slapen, en dan vieren we de 50ste verjaardag van Nederlands oudste straatorkest: Kladderadatsch uit Nijmegen! Met optredens van straatorkesten uit gansch het land en 's avonds een optreden van de Bossche polder-polkaband Straf. Cultureel Terras De Kaaij, 6 juli, vanaf 15:00.

Zo! Dag twee van het kabinet, en Yesilgöz heeft nu al Wilders 'onverantwoord' genoemd en Wilders heeft haar beticht van het maken van een 'valse, vuile beschuldiging'. 🍿

Het gaat al eerder los dan ik had verwacht. Maar misschien vinden alle coalitiepartijen dit prima?

A student asks for links to resources concerning the following. Any suggestions?
1. Is it possible to point to a species of modern marine mammal that is ancient compared to others?
2. Is it possible to point to certain geographical areas on Earth where the phenomenon of returning to the sea happened?

Here's a short video with some kitten cuteness overload. All five of a litter playing together at Almost Home Cat Rescue. What a sweet bunch they are!

https://youtube.com/shorts/HfWuo-0cZU4

Posting a 4th of July Eddie last year sparked some interesting speculations about which metal mascots could take which other ones