I don't think the Constitution will be brushed aside but that considerable damage will occur while the Boy's Club has free rein of the White House. I agree with that State governments and financial consequences will eventually force the GOP to return to their jobs. The situation afterwards is hard to know. It makes me think of the novel, Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. A scientist tries to explain the new anomalies and uninhabitable places on aliens who had a party on our planet and did not pick up after themselves.

What gives me a faint sense of hope is that the movement may become a victim of its own success. The reliable donkey which carried all the past sins into the desert has been put out of its misery.

Bad outcomes will put pressure on the GOP.

Continuing the theme of the relationship between States and Federal budgets, there was a quick response to the NIH cuts from attorney generals: 22 States Sue to Block Trump Cuts to Medical Research Funding. And a federal judge has just put a stay on the order.

The money involved supports local economies in the same way military spending supports regions around bases. Here is one example: ‘This is a death blow’: NIH to cut billions in research overhead funding

People care a lot about the rule of law as it pertains to their situation. Those who believe that the election was stolen from Trump in 2020 saw the system as failing and that vigilante reaction was a reasonable response.

That is a different kettle of fish from looking at Trump's past treatment of contracts and creditors. In NYC, he lost the ability to do deals as his word became null. He found a bigger aquarium to urinate within afterwards.

I think Congress will eventually fight to get the power of the purse back. The loss of institutional knowledge and structure, however, will take decades to repair if the Musketeers succeed.

The willingness of the GOP to go along with the demolition will be tested when their dependence upon federal spending is revealed through its withdrawal. Take, for example, the spending through the Department of Education. Here is a report on how much goes toward Red States. The States want to suckle upon that teat without the anti-poverty goals of the Feds.

The broader problem for the Red States is that tax cuts and deals that make them more attractive to businesses rely on the Federal budget to displace costs. The Balance of Payments shows this asymmetry. The breakdown is not a one-to-one correspondence but does show the close relationship binding States and the Federal budgets together. If the Federal structure goes to the guillotine, The GOP will lose a significant source for dough. As noted in this analysis on expenditures, spending in the tax code includes:

When the federal government spends money on mandatory and discretionary programs, the U.S. Treasury writes a check to pay the program costs. But there is another type of federal spending that operates a little differently. Lawmakers have written hundreds of tax breaks into the federal tax code - for instance, special low tax rates on capital gains (certain kinds of investments), a deduction for home mortgage interest, and many others.

In fact, tax breaks function as a type of government spending, and they are officially called "tax expenditures" by the Treasury Department. Tax breaks cost the federal government more than $1.3 trillion in 2020 – nearly as much as all discretionary spending in the same year. — OMB report

This set up cannot continue if lawmakers surrender their power to Trump.

Good luck with that. Let the supreme court think about it make a decision once the things have been already done. — ssu

Time is a critical factor. If the push to remove personnel through massive buyouts allows a budget to pass that does not include certain costs, future censure will not magically provide renumeration nor restore operations that have been shut down.

Exactly. This is why I see it as easily the most disastrous of his plans. The Feds also benefit from a great deal of prestige. People want to work there. They get to recruit from top schools the way big consulting or law firms do, despite paying a fraction of the pay. They are going to lose that. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for underlining this aspect. Knowing many excellent government workers, their sense of service in exchange for gain they could have had elsewhere is palpable.

I didn't say anything about efficiency. It's the effectiveness of monarchy that caused every ancient democracy to transition into monarchy. — frank

King-making is a deep seated drive and this has played out in American history and the presidency has evolved from a minor federal figurehead to something like a king in the sense that the whole political tone changes due to presidential agenda. This is not the result of a nefarious plot. It's because over and over, we found that an integrated, centralized authority can solve problems that the competing states simply can't. — frank

Different in what way? — frank

The agencies and bureaus are established through law whereas DOGE has sprung directly from Trump's forehead.

Would you grant that your example of willful unaccountability of an agency, which is supposed be overseen by Congress, is different than the motives behind the formation of DOGE?

How does your question relate to my assertion that monarchy will not provide the efficiency you suggest it could provide?

In this case, Hamilton is addressing decisions that the Executive makes and does not want to own.

I am not saying that DOGE amounts to a plurality of the executive. Hamilton was not saying having such councils were a sharing of power. He was arguing against those who thought such councils would help provide a balance of power. Musk is Donald's dog. My observation is different than wondering whose tail is wagging who, interesting as that may be. The point of #70 is about taking responsibility and how an Executive may avoid it.

Hamilton was undoubtedly a proponent of a strong central government. The Federalist Papers hammers out a negotiation with those who opposed the idea. That is why the rules for impeachment and criminal liability were agreed to in them. The separation of government powers was developed for the same reason. Hamilton uses these concessions to argue against those who wanted to stay within the articles of "confederation."

Ok. Musk is working under Trump's authority, so there is no plurality. — frank

The point of my observation is that DOGE is acting as a council outside the role of "advise and consent" apportioned to Congress. Hamilton was comparing the role of councils in the proposed government with their use in the British Monarchy. Hamilton was arguing that executive councils in a system of checks and balances would obscure the source of decisions rather than make them more democratic. The lack of transparency of the Musk operation is a fair example of Hamilton's concern.

Hamilton was a monarchist. — frank

On what basis do you say that?

I think the quote you posted is an argument for monarchy. — frank

Read the Federalist Papers I linked to. Hamilton constantly contrasts the character of the Executive against the nature of the English monarch.

I'm not quite getting your point. — frank

The context of #70 is that a number of groups were arguing that the office of President should be a plurality of some kind. The Constitution was written only recognizing a single occupant. Hamilton's comparison with the British Monarchy is to note that the Monarch does not have the checks on his power that the President has so the role of councils should not be seen in the same light.

From where shall this anticipated efficiency emerge?

In addition to violating the separation of powers established by the Constitution, the DOGE introduces a plurality of agents where Hamilton argued there should only be one:

But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive, and which lies as much against the last as the first plan, is, that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.

Responsibility is of two kinds to censure and to punishment. The first is the more important of the two, especially in an elective office. Man, in public trust, will much oftener act in such a manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment. But the multiplication of the Executive adds to the difficulty of detection in either case. It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. The circumstances which may have led to any national miscarriage or misfortune are sometimes so complicated that, where there are a number of actors who may have had different degrees and kinds of agency, though we may clearly see upon the whole that there has been mismanagement, yet it may be impracticable to pronounce to whose account the evil which may have been incurred is truly chargeable.

``I was overruled by my council. The council were so divided in their opinions that it was impossible to obtain any better resolution on the point.'' These and similar pretexts are constantly at hand, whether true or false. And who is there that will either take the trouble or incur the odium, of a strict scrutiny into the secret springs of the transaction? Should there be found a citizen zealous enough to undertake the unpromising task, if there happen to be collusion between the parties concerned, how easy it is to clothe the circumstances with so much ambiguity, as to render it uncertain what was the precise conduct of any of those parties? — Federalist Paper #70

This captures the peculiar way that Trump says "I, alone can fix it" while never being the cause of any problem. The "buck" of Truman is forever on a cruise ship, playing shuffleboard with the other retirees.

Yes, during corporate takeovers, eliminating duplicate functions and getting rid of unwanted functions is standard operating procedure. Firing FBI agents because they did their jobs is another matter. The decrease in regulatory function by simply removing personnel circumvents the role of Congress as a separate branch of government.

The culture of a professional civil service that curries favor to no party will not be improved by such measures. They will, instead, bring back the patronage system of Tammany Hall.

I am surprised by the number here who support monarchy.

The new executive is firing many people in the name of changing policy. Those mostly comprise of people who were doing what their job description required of them by established law. The idea that those job descriptions were a personal choice of the employee is stupid. That is the pervasive algorithm of the new administration.

Any private enterprise who behaved in the same way would disappear in a heartbeat.

The changes and movements of people from the early Bronze age are significant. We don't have to go back as far as the emergence of the species.

That's a bit of a strange thing to say. Aren't Germans indigenous to Germany, the Irish indigenous to Ireland, and the French indigenous to France? Etc. — Arcane Sandwich

Depends upon how far back you go.

I try to see through those lenses. But my personal and family quality of life will suffer if those changes occur. My workplace will change for the worse. My city will become more fearful and less diverse.

When you said that your old world had disappeared, you sounded excited by the prospect of a new one.

I feel like the USA I grew up in is gone. — frank

What was it like?

I think Trump's vision of securing Canada and Greenland is genius. — frank

Does this dream of Manifest Destiny promise to bring the old USA back?

The presence of Musk, Vance, and Vought signals that visionaries are gathering around Trump. — frank

Musk and Zuckerberg run global empires whose fortunes will increase after having fellated Trump. The control of the communication environment is shrinking to the needs of predatory capitalists. MAGA is their mascot now.

It is so cute when it sits up and begs.

It will be surprising if Canada puts together a rope-a-dope response to the tariffs of the kind that Mexico has done.

Each of the Provinces have been focused upon particular targets to boycott. The emphasis upon targeting states that support Trump is not a feature of the Mexican statements.

Edit to add: Canada buys 30 days.

As far as values go, Nietzsche drew a sharp distinction between Christianity and ancient philosophers:

To harm stupidity.- Surely, the faith preached so stubbornly and with so much conviction, that egoism is reprehensible, has on the whole harmed egoism (while benefiting, as I shall repeat a hundred times, the herd instincts!) -above all, by depriving egoism of its good conscience and bidding us to find in it the true source of all unhappiness. "Your selfishness is the misfortune of your life''-that was preached for thousands of years and harmed, as I have said, selfishness and deprived it of much spirit, much cheerfulness, much sensitivity, much beauty; it made selfishness stupid and ugly and poisoned it.

The ancient philosophers taught that the main source of misfortune was something very different. Beginning with Socrates, these thinkers never wearied of preaching: "Your thoughtlessness and stupidity, the way you live according to the rule, your submission to your neighbor's opinion is the reason why you so rarely achieve happiness; we thinkers, as thinkers, are the
happiest of all.''

Let us not decide here whether this sermon against stupidity had better reasons on its side than did the sermon against selfishness. What is certain, however, is that it deprived stupidity
of its good conscience; these philosophers harmed stupidity. — Nietzsche, Gay Science, 328

The scope of the book, of which I am less than halfway through, is said by Rödl to address the validity of empirical judgements by the end of it. That suggests that more is required than the claim about what "anyone already knows".

But it is fair to say he claims his view is less deluded than others. I am not sure what I think about it, but that element was missing from the discussion here so far.

It was the day before tariffs and all through the house, not a creature was stirring,

unless you were one of the many nations planning their responses to every conceivable proposal.

What is being opposed by Rödl is the ground for thinking:

If Rodl is to subtly critique the various conceptions of thought on the basis of not properly capturing self-consciousness — Leontiskos

By speaking of how "objectivity and self-consciousness can be conjoined", Rödl is sounding a retreat from where "various conceptions of thought" are possible contenders of a true condition. His argument is the antithesis to a prolegomenon of any future metaphysics:

The science of judgment does not stake out a position, located in a space of positions structured by relations of exclusion or inclusion. It says only what anyone always already knows, knows insofar as she judges at all. — ibid. page 39

At the end of 3.1, a footnote compares the "the science without contrary" with a passage from Wittgenstein:

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations § 251, suggests that it is the defining mark of “grammatical sentences”, which are the province of philosophical reflection, to be without contrary. — ibid. Footnote 1

In regard to Rödl militating against the mind/not mind opposition, perhaps a closer example of concordance with Wittgenstein is in the Blue Book where solipsism is said not to be an opinion.

The Klima quote does demonstrate that he and Rödl are both addressing a shared understanding
of force/content propositions. 's description of second order judgement also bears that out. Perhaps the impending discussion of Aristotle will touch upon some of the distinctions between ancient and modern concepts that concern Klima. But those distinctions do not directly concern Rödl's effort here to completely defeat the force/content explanation for all time.

Rödl does not treat his opposition as an equal in a dispute such as Anselm or Aquinas would argue against. Rödl uses the term "reflection" in a consistent way in the book. An early example:

Therefore there is no such thing as a first-person proposition. There has been opposition to the idea that first-person thought is a propositional attitude. This is helpful, for it weakens the immunity to reflection enjoyed by the idea. Yet the opposition is limited; it limits itself by thinking of the first person as marking out a special class of thoughts. — ibid. page 34

To lose this immunity is to become exposed in a way that causes distress to the thinker. The isolation of immunity interferes with reflection. The question of epistemic agency is treated as an illusion:

I am doing something, I am active. It is not a point about the content. There is no notion that the I think is inside p, no notion that reflecting on the I think is reflecting on p. The self-consciousness of thought is not in view in the infatuation with agency — ibid. 35

.

The coup de grâce given to his proposed interlocutors:

But if what I say is true, then the demand for argument does not show intellectual acumen, but betrays a lack of understanding. An argument establishes that something is so by citing grounds for it. Embracing the argument involves affirming these grounds. An argument rests judgment on judgment. But if what I say is true, then the knowledge of it is contained in any judgment. There is no meaning in the idea that I might come to know it by turning to a further judgment. — ibid. page 39

Now that T company has had to retreat from the federal funding freeze fiasco, I wonder if they will carry out the promised tariff show on Feb 1. These guys are starting to cut into my budget.

You presume what you might conclude. If 'matter' is not a something we encounter in experience, then it has been shuttled off into another ward.

No need to speak ill of it or praise it.

Because if the critique of the force/content distinction is ultimately that it is dualistic, then I'm not sure where else there is to go. — Leontiskos

From what I have gathered so far, that is not Rödl's interest. It is in 2.7 that the objection to the force/content distinction comes to a head:

The force-content distinction enables us to describe and understand all these phenomena. Thus it has great explanatory power. Giving it up is costly. Unless we are being given assurance that we will be able to understand all this without that distinction, we do well to keep it.

This would make sense if the force-content distinction did. But it does not. What is confused in itself does not provide understanding. As the force-content distinction makes no sense, it has no explanatory power. There is no cost to abandoning it. On the contrary. It costs to retain it. Using the distinction, we will be certain not to understand what we seek to understand; we will be certain to distort it and impede its comprehension. — ibid. 2.7, page 37

Whether one follows this reasoning or not, the argument is not collapsing a duality but asking for a different kind of distinction unobserved by the force/content advocates:

Thus it may seem that c-propositions are the main topic; they are what the semantic theory is about. Yet, the concept of a c-proposition can claim to be a semantic concept only if c-propositions can be shown to inform the use of language. And they can inform this use only by figuring in the thoughts of those who use the language, as these think how to use it and how it is correct to use it. Thus the soundness of the concept of a c-proposition depends on there being this structure to the thought of someone who uses a sentence to make an assertion: thinking it correct to use the sentence in the way that she does, she thinks that a c-proposition is true at the context in which she uses it. — ibid. page 30

The question becomes, on what basis does that "structure of thought" involve verification from what is presumed to exist outside of it. At that point, I do not see it as a matter of how "Pat" or "Quenton" choose what is happening.

The Federal Grant Freeze announced today has already started to draw lawsuits.

The broad sweep is a thumb in the eye of the Legislative Branch as they involve appropriated funds.

Since the order is so immediate, efforts are being made to get a restraining order to stop it.

T administration has their best people on it.

When Brooke Rollins was asked who would work on farms if the labor force was deported, she said she would address any ‘hypothetical issues that turn out to be real. — Investigate Midwest

The broad sweep of the federal raids has already prompted many workers to stay home in California.

Fair enough.

Rödl says that the I think accompanies all my thoughts, or at the very least he wants to place a very strong emphasis on self-consciousness in thinking and judging. It seems overboard. What is the context that would account for this sort of emphasis? Thanks. — Leontiskos

What is a self in the thesis is not a given. The critique of the Fregean sets of references moves away from the self who affirms stuff (or not) in all situations. Rödl's beginning point of rejecting mind versus not-mind as the ground of possible experience in the Kant fashion is either a benefit or not. I am trying to hear him out on that basis.

I decided to follow this question at least as far as of how Aristotle is read by Rödl.

Have you not settled all possible readings to be useless?

While I appreciate many of your observations, the arrogance of this remark is not a benefit.

There is no such thing as a “Public Weal” — NOS4A2

That is odd to hear after your years of arguing for a particular vision of that above others.

I was not predicting who came out on top. Just pointing to a paradox to accepting trump's conditions for those interested in doing a particular job.

As the matter involves the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches, even the most hard core trumpsters may not kiss the ring for this.

Since the IGs are a crucial element of Congressional oversight, it will be interesting to see if the GOP will let this go forward. At the very least, having to seat this many new officers is not how the legislators were imagining their Spring.

Are you saying this in response to actually reading the book or stating an opinion in general about such attempts?

But it relates to his later point from Thomas Nagel about 'thoughts we can't get outside of'. Nagel emphasizes that there are perspectives—like the validity of reason or the unity of thought—that we cannot evaluate "from the outside" because they form the very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur. — Wayfarer

So, what do you make of Rödl's statement that Nagel is making a similar mistake? (as pointed to previously}.