Complicity, Neutrality, Atrocity (3/5)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Complicity, Exposure, and Activism

This is part 3 of a five part series. For part 1, go here. For part 2, go here.

At this point, the Stakeholders have criticized, the Institution has half-responded, and the Stakeholders have rebutted that half-response. What’s most likely to happen next is that because the Institution controls the terms of the debate, it will insist on a purely procedural discussion. The substantive issues are to be set aside as “too complex and controversial.” The issue of complicity is quickly to be submerged in a broth of procedural acids and left to corrode. The Institution, it will be repeated, must be governed in an orderly fashion—a fashion that just happens to give a systematic, unyielding presumption to stasis and the status quo, that places a nearly impossible burden of proof on anyone who seeks to change it, and that then describes doing so as a binding norm. Continue reading →

Let Them Eat Each Other

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, Fatwas, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post here called “Academic Hiring and Genocide,” in which I argued that genocidaires should, at the very least, be excluded from academic life, but ideally should be excluded from gainful employment itself. Whatever anyone thought of the argument, readers might have wondered about its practical relevance. “So Khawaja’s calling for the on-campus cancellation of ‘genocidaires’. Interesting vendetta, but how many genocidaires are there, anyway? And how many are actively seeking employment right now, including academic employment?” The New York Times reports that the “Defense Department [Is] to Cut Over 5,000” workers due to the Musk-Trump rampage against the “Deep State.” Could I possibly have meant them? Take a wild guess. Continue reading →

Complicity, Neutrality, Atrocity (2/5)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Stakeholders, Politicization, and Standing to Complain

This is part 2 of a five part series. For part 1, go here.

Background context: an institution accused of complicity in injustice counter-accuses its accusers of politicization and lack of standing.

Start with the politicization objection. The Stakeholders have two separate responses here. 

Responding to the politicization objection. First, they point out that it’s not clear that the politicization of a previously apolitical scene is necessarily objectionable. Productiveness, order, and justice are three separate values whose relative value is far from self-evident. Given this, it’s obviously not the case that the value of productiveness and order so outweigh justice as to trump it altogether. Continue reading →

Complicity, Neutrality, Atrocity (1/5)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Complicity and the Strategy of Evasion

Imagine that an institution (“the Institution”) maintains a set of investments in various enterprises that make a clear and demonstrable contribution to some indisputable injustice. Now suppose that a set of stakeholders (“the Stakeholders”) objects to these investments, calling on the Institution to divulge the facts in a fuller way, and demanding divestment from the clearly objectionable investments.  Continue reading →

Epistolary Sprouts in Brussels

Posted on by under anarchism, libertarianism, liberty and the left

The glorious ongoing Institut Coppet online collection of Gustave de Molinari’s Complete Works has brought to light some correspondence between Molinari and Proudhon from their years of Brussels exile during Napoléon III’s regime in France.  The letters are few in number and are not ideologically substantive, but they are nonetheless interesting.  So I’ve translated them.  Enjoy! 

Provider, Heal Thyself

Posted on by under EVS Journal, Health Care Series

Every now and then, in debates about the political economy of health care, you’ll run into the physician who declares that he’s had it with being called a “provider,” and won’t put up with it a minute longer. He went to med school, he got an MD, he walked uphill-barefoot-in-the-snow-both-ways, from anatomy and physiology to endocrinology and immunology–and back. He did an internship. He did his residency. He spent his nights on call, sleeping in the hospital. He’s a physician, goddammit, not a “provider,” and he refuses to be called by the latter name. That’s the problem with health care today, by gum. The insurers and administrators have taken over, using new-fangled “provider” jargon, and lost touch with the good old days, when MDs were MDs, and reimbursement was fee for service. Continue reading →

Hayek on Social Knowledge

Posted on by under Big Data, Hayek, political philosophy

We’re reading Hayek’s famous paper, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in our monthly reading group tomorrow. I’ve never been convinced by Hayek’s argument, and get less convinced every time I re-read the paper. I don’t have time to work out a full response to the paper, so here, for whatever it’s worth, is a quick laundry list of objections to be developed at some later date. Continue reading →

Academic Hiring and Genocide

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, character based voting, ethics, Fatwas, Palestine

“In the literature of complaint and reform, and in the endless reports from distinguished groups identifying a crisis in some element or all of higher education in America, a key defect is often the absence of practical solutions.” 

–John V. Lombardi, How Universities Work, p. 31. 

In an essay I posted here a few weeks ago, I argued that genocidaires seeking lower-level electoral office should be denied such offices at the ballot box. The argument was framed as a response to Jason Brennan’s account of the ethics of voting, which he describes as “the ethics of voting in political contexts.”(1) Though he doesn’t quite define “political contexts,” it’s obvious enough that he means voting in democratic elections for governmental office, e.g., for U.S. President, for legislative offices, and in some cases for judicial offices, taking U.S. electoral politics as the paradigm. Continue reading →

No More Tears

Posted on by under Fatwas, Health Care Series, Trump 2

The Selena Gomez controversy may not be your idea of a top story right now, but I think it has a certain interest to it. As you may know, Gomez took to social media to post a video of herself sobbing about the recent ICE deportations. No sooner did she do so, but she was assailed for it. She tried to explain herself, only to invite further derision, then ended up deleting both the original post and one of her later explanations. 

Of particular interest to me is this riposte to Gomez from Thomas Homan, acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, and now the White House “border czar.” 

We’ve got a quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl coming across an open border. Where’s the tears for them?

The border isn’t “open,” and the “quarter of a million” figure is phony. But I have a pretty direct answer to Homan’s question, and have special standing to answer it: If you want tears, look elsewhere.  Continue reading →