While we’re talking about Scott, this “piece on John Derbyshire”:http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29142.html is the best example of how to do intellectual garbage pick-up that I’ve seen in some considerable while. The lede:
bq. Few things are quite so instructive (if not quite in the sense he intends) as watching John Derbyshire pretend to wrestle with what he supposes to be deeply transgressive thoughts about matters of politics, culture, and morality. The topics vary. The method does not. “Why, it is shocking to find myself considering things from this angle!” he says sotto voce. “Yet one must be brave, and consider the possibility that I am, in fact, completely correct.”
Click through to read the rest.
{ 37 comments }
Ben A 08.13.06 at 5:21 pm
Really? I would have said it a great example of arguing by false analogy and ad hominum. Having read both pieces, I am not even sure what it is that McLemee disagrees with. I did gather that McLemee denies that the claim (that Derbyshire does not make) that is no such thing as an innocent bystanders. Well, bully for that, of course.
Ken C. 08.13.06 at 6:49 pm
What false analogy? What ad hominem? It’s pretty plain that Derbyshire is coyly “thinking the unthinkable”, pulling “collective responsibility” out of his pocket and putting halfway back in. He tries it on the South Koreans for size, then on the Lebanese, then invokes his Greatest Generation. Sooner or later, he thinks, we’ll have to Do What Needs to Be Done.
rented mule 08.13.06 at 7:07 pm
Derbyshire is useful to have around and livens things up on The Corner: anti Iraq war, anti intelligent design, against the state interfering with Michael Schiavo, against the criminalization of abortion. Of course, he’s also the worst kind of xenophobe and don’t get him started on the gay. Still, you take what you can get.
p. shields 08.13.06 at 7:37 pm
“Of course, he’s also the worst kind of xenophobe…”
This would probably surprise his wife.
P O'Neill 08.13.06 at 8:22 pm
I wonder will he link to that NER article from his perch at the Corner? There might be some stuff that he hides even from them (in the same way, from the opposite direction, that Cathy Siepp hides her bashing of the US healthcare system from her National Review readers). In general, I agree with #3 — having a reactionary old Tory around at the Corner does serve a purpose, not least because he’s far less signed up to the cult of personality around Bush than his fellow Cornholers.
T. Scrivener 08.13.06 at 11:28 pm
Indeed. Future generations will regard John Derbyshire as one of the great luminaries of the age along with David Horowitz and Anne Coulter.
nick s 08.14.06 at 12:13 am
This would probably surprise his wife.
Plenty of Colonel Blimp types — and Blimp, I think, is the best analogy — had foreign wives. I still think he’d have been better served as a frequent letter-writer to the Telegraph.
dearieme 08.14.06 at 4:46 am
What a wonderful argument, Nick. How widely can it be used? “He isn’t an anti-semite, his wife is Jewish”. “Ah, but lots of people that I wish to accuse of being antisemites have Jewish wives.” “He isn’t a gay-basher….”. “He isn’t a black-hater….”. Marvellous.
abb1 08.14.06 at 4:57 am
Generally I enjoy reading nihilists – they are very amusing – but this one has a problem. He is grotesque and shocking all right, but he lacks irony and especially self-irony, and this little flaw really ruins everything.
Try Mark Ames at exile.ru and a bunch of other folks there.
pedro 08.14.06 at 5:47 am
I muse: perhaps he’s just a mildly tolerant, discriminating xenophobe? After all, he does say:
“One doesn’t want to be accused of inhuman callousness; but I am willing to confess…that the spectacle of Middle Eastern Muslims slaughtering each other is one that I find I can contemplate with calm composure.”
This quote does suggest, at the very least, that the man has different reactions to different spectacles/slaughters, depending on the ethnic/religious/national identity of the perpetrators and victims. I find it hard to believe this is a person who is committed to the proposition that human life is equally valuable everywhere.
Brett Bellmore 08.14.06 at 6:00 am
He’s an immigrant. Like most people who’ve had to deal with immigrating legally, illegal immigration seriously pisses him off. Nobody who’s been through the line, (Including all those gratuitous flaming hoops.) likes a line jumper.
Since advocates of illegal immigration don’t want to have to deal with any of the arguments against it, they find it convenient to assume anybody who opposes it is xenophobic, regardless of what their attitudes towards legal immigration might be.
Personally, while I don’t agree with him on everything, I find Derbyshire to be one of the saner Cornerites.
reuben 08.14.06 at 6:40 am
Like most people who’ve had to deal with immigrating legally, illegal immigration seriously pisses him off
1. Except when he does it, apparently. Derbyshire himself confesses to having been an illegal immigrant.
2. I too am an immigrant, and guess what? Immigration might be a bit of a hassle for well-educated white guys like Derbyshire and myself, but that’s all it is: a hassle. For people like us, immigration isn’t what it is for most immigrants: the chance to escape a lifetime of grinding, abject poverty by going someplace where you can hopefully make a decent life for you and your family. He, like I, had it easy, both before immigrating and during the process. He didn’t leave the UK because he couldn’t feed his family; he left it because he thought that his already very nice life would be even better in the US. That’s the same reason I made the opposite journey. But for him or me or anyone like us to pretend our immigrant experience is similar to that of desperate people who immigrate from economically depressed shitholes so they can do manual labour in the US or UK is frankly bollocks, and reeks of middle class self-aggrandisement.
harry b 08.14.06 at 6:59 am
Reuben’s right, just excessively moderate in the way he/she puts it. When Derbyshire says that if he’d been nabbed he’d have said “Its a fair cop”, well, first of all its dead easy to say that in retrospect, and second, remember, he’d be sent back to a fancy job in London or something. Creep. I’ve held a green card for 15 years, and have made my life here (2, soon 3, kids, American spouse, etc). If I am refused citizenship when I apply for it, I shall not for a second resent or think ill of any illegal immigrant except, now, that one.
Elliott Oti 08.14.06 at 7:01 am
He’s an immigrant. Like most people who’ve had to deal with immigrating legally, illegal immigration seriously pisses him off. Nobody who’s been through the line, (Including all those gratuitous flaming hoops.) likes a line jumper.
Illegal immigrants aren’t line jumpers. They almost always aren’t allowed to get a place in the line at all.
There are pragmatic, understandable and wholly human reasons to oppose immigration in one form or another. What I don’t get is the often personal nature of the dislike and animus that many have for the illegal immigrant. He can’t come in legally, fine, you don’t want him in illegally, understandable,but why the animosity? What do you expect him to want to do, go back to the shithole he came from and resume eating dirt?
Kand de Veroveraar 08.14.06 at 8:59 am
See, by waving the red rag of “immigration” the thread has been derailed already.
One needs but the slightest sniff of the NRO archives to catch the reek of the Derbster’s contempt for that “damn loathsome filthy accursed place” otherwise known as the Middle East and, when push comes to shove, for the lives of the Mahometan “rabble” that populates it.
Referring to other places of this blue orb, he runs the gamut of chauvinism, from shallow indulgence in clichés of various degrees of harmlessness (even concerning China, that country he’s supposed to know so much about) to hateful spite (e.g. his “passing thoughts” on Koreans, or the thing about the Germans and the Japanese being fascists at heart, with the French thrown in for good measure).
Nuance does matter, but in this case “xenophobe” will do. I don’t see the point of long-winded circumlocutions like “insensitive Anglospheric” or some such.
You see, there’s a tendency in some quarters to think that when a reactionary like Derbyshire bandies expletives he’s bravely calling a spade a spade, whereas when it’s done by other folks it’s T3H TH0WT-P0L1C3 CR4X0R1NG D0WN 0N T3H FR33SP34CH F0R3VAH !!121!2
This asymmetric understanding of the concept of “political correctness” has killed the joys of political vituperation.
OTOH, I have to confess that I find Derbyshire mildly amusing, though not so much as he could be if he extricated his head from his arse. He’s not a callow blowhard like Jonah Goldberg or an utterly unreadable wanker like Victor Davis Hanson.
Adam Kotsko 08.14.06 at 9:23 am
Maybe now that we’ve thoroughly addressed immigration, we can turn our attention to the pedophilia issue.
Walt 08.14.06 at 9:41 am
I’m surprised Derbyshire isn’t in favor of illegal immigration, since it’s our nation’s biggest supply of underaged whores.
reuben 08.14.06 at 10:03 am
Give me your
tired, your poor, your huddled masseshot teenage girls…kid bitz er 08.14.06 at 11:29 am
“I find Derbyshire to be one of the saner Cornerites.”
uhboy… talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.
novakant 08.14.06 at 12:10 pm
that’s nifty little theory you got there Brett, pity though it’s a bunch of though gobbledygook, since the person in question has admitted himself to having been an illegal immigrant for quite a while
pedro 08.14.06 at 12:19 pm
Indeed, novakant. Also, too bad for him that his universal statement “nobody who’s been through…” is false. I’ve been through the line–and resented the treatment I received while being on it–, and I emphatically do like many low-wage illegal immigrants I have met in the course of my stay in the U.S., beginning with some kind, charming local waiters and waitresses. Like Harry B., I’ve just now met the first illegal immigrant I’ve ever had reason to dislike.
Jason Kuznicki 08.14.06 at 12:24 pm
The real problem I have with Derbyshire’s standard argumentative mode is how self-consciously he refuses to examine or criticize his own opinions: “Yet one must be brave, and consider the possibility that I am, in fact, completely correct” — is about as far removed from the great old traditions of Socratic inquiry as one can get. And I do find that snippet to be fairly representative of the way he argues. What you believe by reflex is true; there’s no need to muck things up with any difficulties like, say, thinking…
nick s 08.14.06 at 2:20 pm
He’s an immigrant. Like most people who’ve had to deal with immigrating legally, illegal immigration seriously pisses him off.
Like most people, Brett? Actually, if you’re relying on anecdote, I’ll speak as a person who has had to deal with legal immigration to the US for the past three years. In short, it’s given me a lot of sympathy for those who decide to live in the shadows, and exposed the idiocy of the Lou Dobbs crowd who think that building fences and avoiding bureaucratic reform is any kind of long-term solution. In short, there’s nothing more likely to turn you into an admirer of illegal immigrants that a long-term relationship with the USCIS.
But heh, as a green card holder, I can now go and buy a shitload of guns, which should make Brett happy.
On Colonel Derb: he is indeed one of the saner Cornerites, in the sense that he’s prepared to make something akin to an argument — usually in his New Criterion pieces — whereas Jonah the Legacy Hire is just fucking lazy. And his unreconstructed 1950s sensibility is somewhat refreshing: he’s prepared to say ‘kill all the fuzzy-wuzzies’ while the other denizens of Bullshit Junction only imply it.
billyfrombelfast 08.14.06 at 2:47 pm
Yeah I’m another legal immigrant who has every sympathy with illegal immigrants. And it’s worth repeating what Elliott stated above: the average Mexican day labourer that Derbyshire seems to go after has very little way of getting on the queue, let alone jumping it. Amnesty, green card lottery, H1Bs, work sponsorship aren’t available to them. A lot of the queue jumpers I’ve met are people like Derbyshire when he was illegal – fairly well educated Irish/British/Italians/etc who overstayed visas despite having a good life at home, and never foresaw liking the place enough to stay.
Shelby 08.14.06 at 4:26 pm
Usually I disagree with Derb (when I happen to run across him). Sometimes I more-or-less agree, as on ID. He can even be amusing when writing about, e.g., math. On the whole I’m left with a general distaste — certainly he’s no great master of rhetoric.
All that said, this is rather a crude hatchet job. What, one can’t analyze Lolita without being accused of pederastic longings and horror of one’s adult spouse?
Crystal 08.14.06 at 4:43 pm
Shelby, Derbyshire earlier caused quite a ruckus with an earlier column about how women lose their appeal once they age past 18 or so. (And Darwin made him do it, doncha know.)
If you’re going to analyze Lolita, fine. But not when you come across as a wannabe Humbert Humbert.
It especially gives me the willies because I got my Glamour in the mail today and there was an article on the sex-trafficking of young girls in Cambodia. Reading that article doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy to lechy old right-wingers.
josh 08.14.06 at 5:13 pm
I haven’t read the original column where Derbyshire makes his comment about sexual attractiveness and age, but I certainly don’t get the ‘erotic horror of any female on the far side of puberty’ from the Lolita piece. So that one comment does seem to me a rotten-egg too far — there’s enough damaging to say about Derbyshire (and the piece says a great deal of it) without resorting to cheap, somewhat scattered, shots.
That said, what I find rather more disturbing — and worth commenting on — in the Lolita piece isn’t the suggestion that women begin to lose their erotic appeal after 20, but the citing of _rape statistics_ as support for this claim. Not only does this seem to be in extremely bad taste; but the ‘reasoning’ behind it (rapists select victims based on their sexual attractiveness; ergo being raped is a marker of sexual attractiveness; therefore not being raped is a marked of declining sexual attractiveness) is a truly breathtaking example of how an argument can be wrong, and ridiculous, not just in one of its assumptions or logical leaps, but in all. Which is I suppose an accomplishment in its own right.
pedro 08.14.06 at 5:29 pm
josh, Derbyshire is so enamoured with modus ponens, that he routinely applies it–much to his own amusement–without expressing the slightest doubt about the premises tacitly invoked. Instead, he reminds us that his impeccable applications of modus ponens suggest that the conclusions he reaches may indeed be true.
Brett Bellmore 08.14.06 at 7:37 pm
“And it’s worth repeating what Elliott stated above: the average Mexican day labourer that Derbyshire seems to go after has very little way of getting on the queue, let alone jumping it.”
If nations have any right to control who enters them, (A contraversial proposition only in the most rarified circles.) that’s an argument with all the resonance of, “Of course he robbed the bank, it’s not like he had any money on deposit that he could legally withdraw.”
I’ll readily grant that there are people who navagate the immigration process, and come out the other end still sympathetic towards illegal immigrants. Maybe that’s even why I said “most”, rather than “all”.
harry b 08.14.06 at 7:49 pm
maybe, Brett. But it would be a bit rich for someone who was already a millionaire and had nevertheless robbed the bank himself to complain, wouldn’t it?
nick s 08.14.06 at 8:14 pm
(A contraversial proposition only in the most rarified circles.)
Nice strawman, Dorothy.
Plenty of nations have much stricter requirements for immigration. Those nations also have a more transparent process for determining eligibility, and a bureaucracy that isn’t stuck in the pre-computer age and prone to arbitrary and self-contradictory interpretation.
Maybe that’s even why I said “mostâ€, rather than “allâ€.
Pulling out a plurality from your rear doesn’t mean it’s not pulled out of your rear.
Henry 08.14.06 at 9:06 pm
Add me to the list of people who’ve come through the bureaucracy of the legal immigration process,and have nothing but sympathy for illegal immigrants (with the exception of illegal-immigration-for-me-but-not-for-thee losers like Derbyshire).
Elliott Oti 08.15.06 at 1:18 am
If nations have any right to control who enters them, (A contraversial proposition only in the most rarified circles.) that’s an argument with all the resonance of, “Of course he robbed the bank, it’s not like he had any money on deposit that he could legally withdraw.â€
Illegal immigration is not akin to bank robbery. That’s a very distasteful analogy, and is an example of the peculiar animosity towards illegal immigrants I was talking about. Playing golf on the greens of the country club without club membership or an explicit invitation would actually be a somewhat more fitting analogy.
Yet even that analogy is flawed, because in the end, particularly in the US, illegal immigrants immigrate because there is an existing demand for their services. There is no existing demand for bank robbery or greens crashing. That not everyone is happy with the fact that a market exists for illegal immigrant labor, soi, but the attempts to dehumanize them at every opportunity is not an edifying sight.
Elliott Oti 08.15.06 at 1:28 am
I might add, going in on Brett Bellmore’s remark about nations having the right to control who enters them, that I have alsways found peculiar the insistence that capital should be mobile, and that nations throw up no barriers to hinder its flow, but that the same courtesy is never extended towards labour. Free markets encompass services as well as goods and it is surely the credo of our libertarian times that nations have no right to interfere with either.
harry b 08.15.06 at 7:44 am
If nations have any right to control who enters them
It is, indeed, more or less uncontroversial that nations have some right to control who enters them. But they do not (morally) have unrestricted discretion — or at least, if they do, that needs to be shown, and it is far from uncontroversial that they do. I think you’d need to posit very very strong rights in order to get your analogy to stand. (Some egs — I suspect that the US has very strong duties to allow a great deal of immigration from the various countries in south and Central America and south asia whose fates it has excercised very strong influence over; Britain has very strong duties to allow a good deal of immigration from the former commonwealth and Ireland/Eire). And, as I said, even if you could get your analogy to stand, I don’t think its kosher to use it in defence of the anti-illegal-immigration rantings of an illegal immigrant whose next-best-option was utterly cushy (I’m assuming that he wasn’t fleeing England for his life or freedom, which, in the light of his comments about underage girls, might be a generous assumption).
engels 08.15.06 at 7:54 am
What Brett is defending is The State preventing people from doing something which they have freely chosen to do and which doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights to property, security of the person, etc, and doing so by exercising coercion with the help of an enormous bureaucracy.
Or, to put it another way: illegal immigration is driven by the same market forces which made Bill Gates a billionaire, or which drive the markets in pornography and illegal drugs.
Is Brett Bellmore really a libertarian?
If so, then libertarianism is more hypocritical and more misnamed than I thought.
james 08.15.06 at 10:10 am
With a welfare state, illegal immigration represents a trade off between the benefit of having the immigrant and the cost of the services used.
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