tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226574432024-03-13T07:58:34.217-05:00"E pur si muove!"Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comBlogger606125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-11373631860237118662019-03-23T00:03:00.000-05:002019-03-23T00:14:04.140-05:00Trigger Warnings: For and Against<br />
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/science/trigger-warnings-studies.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR1z9zFOANK-ABdeOxnOQnLuMKA10bB3Rf5o_aPtn_9opb-JjLtKr6BRKO0">This article in the NY Times</a> really flummoxed me, but not for the reason you would guess. Most of the studies described in it seem to me to be asking the
wrong questions about trigger warnings and whether they work.</div>
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Toward the end of my teaching career at UW Madison, I began
putting a trigger warning on the syllabus of my contemporary moral
issues class. I had recently had a student who was a rape
victim, and she found our discussion of whether pornography should be
banned on the basis of the theory that it causes rape very
disturbing. My point was that I didn't want someone to go through
this if they thought they couldn't handle it. This seemed only decent to me. I didn't want to be setting psychological booby traps for people who have been the victims of heinous violence or other deeply shocking experiences. Sadly, in a class of eighty people, there are likely to be several who have. I hoped that my warning would enable people who would find some of our material painful in ways they cannot or do not wish to cope with to drop the class in time to find another more suitable one. </div>
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The trouble with most of the studies in the Times article -- about whether trigger warnings work -- is that they ask the wrong question. They ask whether the warning changes the way you feel about the triggering
event when it happens. Huh? Really? It literally had not entered my
mind that someone would think that this is the point of a trigger warning. Do people really think that knowing in advance that people are going to say things that call up vivid, horrible memories will somehow make this less vivid and horrible? <i>Why? </i>I can't imagine an answer to this question.</div>
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Then again, maybe what these people are thinking is that trigger warnings are notices that people are going to discuss <i>opinions</i> that you strongly disagree with, so strongly that you may fly into a fit of rage and shock. I would simply repeat the same question: How would telling them in advance that we are about to shock and offend them change their feelings of shock and offense?</div>
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Until I read the Times article, I really did not understand the trigger warning debate. Where is the issue? What the Hell is wrong with warning people about psychological booby traps? There is such a thing as psychological trauma and the aftereffects are very real. Doesn't everybody know that?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Now I realize that there is actually a group of people, apparently a very very large group, that is trying to use trigger warnings for a completely different purpose. Evidently, the trigger
warning idea is often an attempt to micromanage people's feelings --
and by people who have no business trying to do something like that,
because they have no clue how real feelings actually work. Isn't it funny how
those who want to manage others are often the ones least qualified to
do so!<br />
<br />
(Hat tip to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012979156411">Kevin Hill</a> for bringing this article to my attention.)</div>
<br />Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-29446825146013326752018-11-11T15:36:00.001-06:002018-11-11T15:40:27.347-06:00Henry David Thoreau: A Question of Character?<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kV1NTPN1_R4/W-ifZh7aPvI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/OM3G3xhw67gPqe4RaAA5KaULRrIyS1kEwCEwYBhgL/s1600/intro_to_thoreau1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="296" data-original-width="250" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kV1NTPN1_R4/W-ifZh7aPvI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/OM3G3xhw67gPqe4RaAA5KaULRrIyS1kEwCEwYBhgL/s1600/intro_to_thoreau1.jpg" /></a><i>This is a brief excerpt from a book I am writing, <b>The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau</b>, forthcoming next year from Bloomsbury.</i></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
There is
one more thing that I need to discuss before I move on from the
subject of Thoreau's life: what you might call the issue of his
character. Henry Thoreau inspires some surprisingly – surprising to me at any rate –
negative reactions in people. I have never forgotten how shocked I
was when, upon first reading selections from <i>Walden</i> as an
assignment in a high school English class, I came to class the next
day and found that virtually all the comments the students made –
and the teacher as well! – were utterly hostile. I think I was the <span style="text-align: center;">only one who defended him.</span></div>
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I got
the impression that people felt that in criticizing how Americans
live he was criticizing them and they took it personally, and some of
the comments about him were really attacks on him as a person. Many
of the attacks I have seen on him since, at least in the
non-scholarly press, were also quite personal. Not long ago there
was an essay about him, in a very prominent magazine, titled “Pond
Scum,” and from the title you can pretty well guess the tone of the
criticisms it contained.<a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote1sym" name="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a>
</div>
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Some
personal attacks on Thoreau are simply cases of the <i>ad hominem
</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">falla</span></span>cy,
the attempt to discredit an argument by discrediting the person who
presents it. If it is done well, an <i>ad hominen</i> attack makes
it hard to take the target argument seriously, at least if it comes
from that particular presenter. It is as if they can talk all they
want, but their microphone has been turned off. Their messages will
not be received.
</div>
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But not
all attacks on Thoreau as a person are <i>ad hominem</i>. His great
subject was the greatest of them all: <i>How should we live? </i><span style="font-style: normal;">As
he attacks this question in </span><i>Walden</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span>
he sets himself up as some sort of example. This opens him to
personal attack: certain sorts of personal criticisms become
logically relevant. He says “you people don't really have to do
so-and-so, and the proof is that I don't do so-and-so.” But he did
do so and so! Therefore maybe you do have to do so-and-so, or at
least his own case fails to prove you don't. That sort of attack is
not a fallacy. It has merit, provided that it does get it right
about what he is saying, and gets its facts straight about what he
actually did.
</div>
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A case
in point is the comment we sometimes hear, that while he was at
Walden he had his mother do his laundry. Actually I hear it a lot.
As Rebecca Solnit has said, there is no important writer in world
literature whose laundry arrangements are so often a subject of
comment. There is even a web site where you can buy a Thoreau
laundry bag.<a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote2sym" name="sdendnote2anc"><sup>ii</sup></a></div>
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What
might be said in response to this criticism? Thoreau's most recent
biographer points out that it involves a historical mistake, as
middle class women in those days, women like Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau,
did not do <i>their own</i> laundry, let alone that of their adult
offspring. Such housekeeping chores were done by servants, typically
Irish immigrants.<a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote3sym" name="sdendnote3anc"><sup>iii</sup></a>
But of course the allegation would remain that somebody other than
Henry did the chore. What of that? I suppose the proper response
depends on what the objection is actually supposed to be. To me,
this is by no means obvious. I strongly suspect that it is a charge
of hypocrisy, that the charge is that he is haughtily setting himself
up as someone who does or does not do something or other, and that
this pretense is belied by his cleaning arrangements. Maybe the idea
is that in <i>Walden</i> he is saying something like: “You people
don't need help from anybody. Look at me! I lived at Walden as an
isolated hermit and never took anyone's help!” As we will see
later, in case it is not already obvious, this would be a stunningly
wrong-headed misinterpretation of what he is saying.</div>
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Then
again, maybe the charge is that Henry was a freeloader, a moocher who
took from others and gave nothing in return. But the idea of
“Thoreau the Freeloader,” if that is the idea, is nearly as false
as the old myth of “Thoreau the Loafer” [<i>answered earlier in this chapter</i>]. It is true that for
nearly all of his life he lived in the house of his parents, but it
is also true that he paid them rent. We find meticulous records he
kept of the amounts paid in his papers, sometimes on the backs of
poems he was working on.<a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote4sym" name="sdendnote4anc"><sup>iv</sup></a>
He also did a substantial amount of the work of building the first
house that the family owned, the the one they called the “Texas
house.” He also did many repair and maintenance jobs around the
house. Every year he planted an elaborate garden, thus making a
substantial contribution of food to the family. Clearly, he believed
in paying your way if you can, and he could.</div>
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<span style="color: black;"> Again,
maybe the charge is something more sophisticated, something like
this: “Thoreau's economic project, of reducing his needs to a
minimum so that he can spend a minimal amount of time working for
pay, is only possible because he is part of an economy that is highly
productive precisely because most people do not live that way, but
produce goods and services full time. It assumes that most people a
not living as he is.” Another comment that I sometimes hear that
might represent the same line of reasoning is the claim that during
the stay at Walden Henry often dined out, at the Thoreau family table
or those of the Emersons or the Alcotts or the Hosmers: the idea
being that the Walden project was subsidized by those who were not
participating in it. I have spoken with economists who raised this
objection. Whether this is a sound one depends in part on just what
his project is and what sorts of claims he is making about it. These
are matters that I will discuss in later chapters. For the moment I
would only point out that this sophisticated version of the objection
is no longer a charge of hypocrisy, but rather an economic or
philosophical objection to his (alleged) theory. The objection is
that it is only feasible if most people don't follow it.</span></div>
<div id="sdendnote1">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote1anc" name="sdendnote1sym">i</a>
Kathryn Schulz, “Pond Scum: Henry David Thoreau’s Moral
Myopia,” <i>The New Yorker</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span>
October 19 2015, pp. 40-45.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote2anc" name="sdendnote2sym">ii</a>
Rebecca Solnit, “Mysteries of Thoreau, Unsolved,” Orion
Magazine;May/Jun2013, Vol. 32 Issue 3, p. 18 and ff. She presents
an amusing series of examples of this comment, some quite silly. </span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote3">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote3anc" name="sdendnote3sym">iii</a>
Laura Dassow Walls, <i>Henry David Thoreau</i>, p. 534, n. 40.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote4">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=22657443#sdendnote4anc" name="sdendnote4sym">iv</a>
Solnit, p. 21. I believe the original source for this bit of
information is Franklin Sanborn, Thoreau's friend and early
biographer, but I have not been able to locate the place where he
says this. </span>
</div>
</div>
<br />Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-88409412834532715532018-07-21T19:29:00.001-05:002018-08-05T15:17:40.742-05:00Responsibility Is Not Like a Glass of Juice<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }</style>
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There is a certain
habit of reasoning about morality that is completely erroneous,
though it is very common and does a lot of mischief. And yet,
strangely enough, I have never seen it identified and dissected.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It sometimes goes
like is:</div>
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A: “You did it!
You are to blame!”
</div>
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B: “The blame is
not all mine: you are to blame too.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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If B means
“and,therefore, I am less to blame” then is is the error at I am
talking about. The idea is that moral responsibility obeys a law of
conservation, like a fluid. If I have a glass of orange juice, and
you take half, there is only half left for me. There can't be more juice just because you took a share. As the juice is distributed,
the different shares must always sum to 100% of the original store.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Moral responsibility
is not like this. Suppose that I hire you to murder Joe Blow, my
worst enemy, and we succeed. Joe is killed. We can both be fully
responsible. How is this possible? How can responibility for this
one event sum to 200%? Well, you could say that responibility is not
a fluid, like orange juice. Or you could say, more pretentiously,
that it does not occupy physical space, like the glass of juice. It
exists in moral space. Morality is not a branch of fluid dynamics.
But there is actually a more straighforward explanation.
Responsibility does not attach to events, like Joe's being killed,
but to people, like you and me. That I am fully responsible simply
means that 1) it was wrong, 2) it was my doing, and 3) there are no
exuses or justifications that would diminish my liability to blame or
punishment. In a criminal conspiracy, where there is one event, such
as the killing of Joe, that is the doing of more than one person,
each can be fully responsible for the same event simply because they all meet all three of these conditions.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The orange juice
picture of responibility is not, strictly speaking, a logical
fallacy. It is simply the application of a false theory. If the
fluid dynamics theory were true, it would be perfectly okay. But it
isn't, so it's not.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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We sometimes see
this theory at work on both sides of a dispute. A woman is sexually
assaulted and someone says, “Well, you shouln't have been in such a
place dressed like that.” If this means, “The blame is partly
yours, therefore that share of the blame can be deducted from from
the other side,” then this is the error I am talking about. It is
the reasoning of the car theif who says “it was your fault for
leaving the keys in the igmition. The victim's prudential error,
even supposing it is real, is not directly relevant to the
blameworthiness of her attacker for his crime. To suppose otherwise
is the mistake that people often describe as “blaming the victim.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the other hand, I
think the concept of “blaming the victim” can itself me a result
of the fluid dynamics idea. In particular, it is sometimes angrily
invoked to block <i>any</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> faulting
of the victim, </span><i>any</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
suggestion that she could have taken steps to avoid being a victim of
crime – </span><span style="font-style: normal;">because any
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">faulting of the victim, even
for purely prudential errors, detracts from the evil of the predators
who victimize them. This is obviously the same fundamental error
as in the first case. It is a particularly virulent form it, because
it tends to block discussions of how to make things better. We
should be able to discuss steps that women can </span><span style="font-style: normal;">take
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">– ranging from common-sense
precautions to arming oneself with a gun and learning to use it
safely and effectively – without being accused of being part of the
problem.</span></div>
Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-36406856406848666202018-07-08T12:48:00.003-05:002018-07-08T12:55:52.396-05:00Generosity: Why Is It Much More Important to Some Philosophers that to Others?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<i>This is an
article I wrote for the <b>International <span style="font-family: inherit;">Encyclopedia of Ethics</span></b><span style="font-family: inherit;">. I
think its interest goes beyond the purely academic, so I'm putting a
copy here.</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> </i>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With few
exceptions, the moral philosophers of the last several centuries have
written little about generosity. Those of the ancient, medieval, and
Renaissance periods, however, often treated it as an important
subject. Though Plato ignores it, Aristotle devotes a substantial
chapter to it, as does Aquina. Indeed, in Book IV of the Nicomachean
Ethics (1119b–1122a) Aristotle recognizes two different virtues
that could be regarded as subspecies of generosity: eleutheria
(“freedom”) and megaloprepeia (“magnanimity”). Descartes
calls generosity “the key of all the virtues, and a general remedy
for all the disorders of the passions” in his treatise The Passions
of the Soul (Art. 161). Spinoza discusses it at some length in Part
IV of his Ethics and treats it as intimately connected with freedom
(Propositions 37 and 50–73). After that, philosophers seem to have
lost interest in the idea of generosity, until Nietzsche, a
philosophical atavist on so many matters, sings the praises of
something he calls a “gift-giving virtue” in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (Part I, Ch. 22). Most likely, Nietzsche’s gift-giving
virtue and Spinoza’s generositas are best understood as a
super-virtue, a sort of generosity of spirit, of which the trait
that we ordinarily call generosity is a natural consequence.
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the reasons
for the decline of interest in generosity is fairly obvious. In
premodern Western ethics it was typically assumed that the sort of
value ethics is concerned with is something that inheres in the
individual person, namely virtue. Virtue was typically supposed to
consist of particular traits, such as courage, temperance, or
generosity. The typically modern ethical theories – utilitarianism
and Kantian deontology – are, essentially, rules for selecting
right actions. Determining what is the right thing to do is quite a
different matter from seeking to understand what sort of person is a
good person. Recent decades have seen a great resurgence of interest
in “virtue ethics,” but this has typically been treated as an
alternative way of doing what Kantianism and utilitarianism do and
has not led to a comparable resurgence of interest in analyzing
particular traits, such as generosity.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another possible
reason why generosity was much more highly regarded before modernity
set in is political. Moral codes and ethical ideals that place a high
value on generosity seem to be most comfortably at home in
aristocratic societies. The very adjective generosus, like
Aristotle’s eleutherios (whence the derivative noun eleutheriotes,
“freedom”), meant “noble”; and the kind of “nobility”
originally meant here was one of birth or “generation”
(generosus, generare, and genus are words from the same family) –
hence it was political in nature. Part of the reason for the
aristocrats’ high valuation of generosity must have been their
disdain for productive activities. Giving wealth away was thought to
be more appropriate for an aristocrat than productively investing it
in agricultural land or capital goods. Further, the fact that one has
wealth to give away rather than consume is proof of one’s lofty
status.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Generosity differs
in potentially important ways from other virtues that necessarily
involve conferring benefits or detriments upon others (what is
sometimes called the “other-regarding virtues”), and some of the
differences might shed light on the question of which cultural and
ethical systems tend to make generosity an important virtue and which
tend to make it less so. Take for instance justice and charity.
Justice is sharply different from generosity. Acts that are just –
for instance being fair to an opponent, keeping a promise, or giving
students the grades they deserve – tend to be required by
considerations of justice. On the other hand, one thing that seems to
be a necessary condition of generosity is that the act is not
required. One gives, not from duty, but from the goodness of one’s
heart. Of course, the promptings of the heart are also what typically
lies behind charitable contributions. Typically, if the benefit
conferred was charitable, it was not given because the giver already
owed it to the recipient. To this extent, it resembles generosity.
There is, however, a large difference between generosity and charity.
“Charity,” at least as the word is used in modern English, refers
to attempts to remedy deficiencies, such as poverty and disease.
Generosity, on the other hand, is an attempt to confer a positive
benefit. Generosity typically takes the form of giving, not alms, but
gifts. Charity is a response to evils, while generosity is a response
to opportunities to do good.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The notion that
justice is the cardinal other-regarding virtue would make more sense
in some worldviews than in others. The sorts of Weltanschauungen more
congenial to it would have to be ones that see the most meritorious
life as one that conforms to the relevant requirements – for
instance one that gives a privileged position to quasi-juridical
concepts like “duty” and “obligation,” as well as to other
concepts that involve an agent’s being bound to do a particular
act, such as “debt” and “owing.” Such a view becomes even
more congenial to a lofty valuation of justice if we add a strong
element of egalitarianism. Egalitarian ideas enable us to see as
either unjust many facts – for instance, the fact that one person
has a larger income than another – that might otherwise not seem to
be so. An egalitarian worldview might well be held by someone who is
quite comfortable with being a citizen in a modern, regulated, and
bureaucratized welfare state based on some sort of egalitarian
ideology – such as those that are characteristic of contemporary
Western Europe and of the English-speaking world. On the other hand,
placing a high value on charity is obviously congenial to orthodox
Christianity, with its emphasis on human sinfulness and frailty and
on the inability of humans ultimately to do well without powerful
help (such as divine grace).</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By the very same
reasoning, though, generosity might be of great interest to someone
who rebels against the worldviews of modern welfare-state liberalism
and Christianity. This attitude is one of the factors that motivate
the work of Hunt and Machan on generosity. The other-regarding traits
of character connect us with our fellow human beings and thus color
the quality and the very meaning of our lives. A highly valued virtue
of charity connects us with others through their suffering and
inability to help themselves. This might well seem like the wrong
sort of focus for such an important part of one’s life. Generosity
connects us with our fellow human beings though opportunities for
advancing their positive well-being. Thus generosity, as a cardinal
virtue, can be a fundamental functioning component in a view of life
in which human beings are regarded as agents who create value and
build their lives, and not primarily as frail and sinful beings in
need of help from above. Justice, if sufficiently inflated, creates a
social world in which the good we do for others is entirely
prescribed, in which everything that is not required is prohibited: a
sort of highly regulated economy of the soul. A generous act, on the
other hand, is not required but chosen freely. To the extent that one
treats generosity as an important other-regarding virtue, one’s
ethical relations with others become a realm of moral freedom.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">References</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Aquinas, Thomas 1948
[ca. 1273]. Summa theologica, trans. Fathers of the Dominican
Province. New York: Benziger Bros. (Esp. 1a 2ae: Question 117.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Aristotle 1985. The
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett.
(Esp. Book IV, Ch. 1 = 1119b–1122a.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Descartes, René
1989 [1649]. The Passions of the Soul, trans. Stephen H. Voss.
Indianapolis: Hackett. (Esp. Articles 156, 159, 161.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nietzsche, Friedrich
2006 [1883–5]. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. Robert Pippin, trans.
Adrian del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Esp. Part I,
Ch. 22: “On the Gift-Giving Virtue.”)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Spinoza,
Baruch/Benedictus de 2005 [1677]. Ethics, trans. Edwin Curley.
London: Penguin Books. (Esp. Part IV, Propositions 37 and 50–73.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Further Readings</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hunt, Lester H.
1975. “Generosity,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 12,
pp. 235–44.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hunt, Lester H.
1997. “The Unity and Diversity of the Virtues: Generosity and
Related Matters,” in Lester H. Hunt, Character and Culture. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 55–87.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kupfer, Joseph 1998.
“Generosity of Spirit,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, pp.
357-367.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Machan, Tibor R.
1998. Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society. Washington, DC: The Cato
Institute.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Schrift, Alan, ed.
1997. The Logic of the Gift. New York: Routledge.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wallace, James 1978.
Virtues and Vices. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (Esp. Ch. 5:
“Benevolence.”)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">White, Richard 2016.
“Nietzsche on Generosity and the Gift-Giving Virtue,” British
Journal for the History of Philosophy, pp. 348-364.</span></div>
Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-73004063995794051712018-07-02T18:25:00.000-05:002018-07-04T01:56:32.593-05:00Jordan Peterson's Lawsuits<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }</style>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HLgY5kLVvzs/Wzq0CoKr0tI/AAAAAAAAB5A/AfqfQu0Wgfs_uoqiQ1VDiDhmXRV858BQQCLcBGAs/s1600/index.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HLgY5kLVvzs/Wzq0CoKr0tI/AAAAAAAAB5A/AfqfQu0Wgfs_uoqiQ1VDiDhmXRV858BQQCLcBGAs/s1600/index.jpeg" /></a>Since<a href="http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2018/06/jordan-peterson-is-no-friend-of-free.html"> my original post about Jordan Peterson discrediting himself</a> as a champion of the
right to free speech I have gotten a response from more than one
person that I would paraphrase like this: Peterson is suing the two
professors at Wilfred Laurier University and threatening to sue the
one at Bloomsburg University for libel because the former said he is
“analogous to Adolf Hitler” and the latter said that he is a
“white nationalist” and a “misogynist.” If libel law is not
incompatible with free speech then what he is doing is not
inconsistent with it.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is like saying:
if a 12-gauge shotgun is not incompatible with free speech, then my
pointing one at you and threatening to shoot if you say one more word
in defense of Donald Trump is not inconsistent with it.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A lawsuit is an
attempt to use government coercion against someone. A threat of one
is a threat to coerce. What feature of libel law makes it possible
to think this is consistent with free speech? I would put it like
this: Libel law does not prohibit points of view or ideas, however
bad they might be. The tort of libel consists, roughly, in
maliciously <i>harming someone</i> by damaging their reputation by
making false statements about them. Moreover, the harm has to be
something that is in some way measurable in money, since the whole
point of a libel suit is to get compensation for the harm that the
plaintiff has suffered.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In all the public
pronouncements Peterson has made defending his lawsuit threats and
explaining their motives, I have not seen him say one single thing
about how these professors have harmed him. What he has said is
things like this: “So I think this is a warning, let’s say, to
other careless administrators and professors who allow their
ideological presuppositions to get the best of them to be a bit more
careful with what they say and do.” In other words, he wants to
intimidate people with bad ideologies to avoid being led by them into
saying objectionable things. This is not the point of libel law. It
is, however, the point of typical censorship regulations.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
There is an obvious
reason why he does not talk about the harms he has suffered. Notice
that the professors he is threatening or attempting to coerce teach
at Wilfred Laurier University and Bloomsburg University. I was
employed as university faculty continuously from 1974 until I retired
in 2016, and I never heard of either of these institutions until this
case. On the other hand, Peterson is a tenured professor at <i>The
University of Toronto </i>– one of the most prestigious
universities in the world. Beyond that, he is probably the most
prominent professor in the English speaking world right now, at least
as far as the mass media are concerned. Every week, hundreds of
people (for reasons that I do not pretend to understand) give him
thousands of dollars by contributing to his web site.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The idea that
comments that one group of these professors made about him in a
closed meeting and the other in an obviously intemperate twitter
message can damage his professional reputation and cause him damage is patently absurd. However, unsophisticated
people who do not understand the law very well can easily be
intimidated into silence by threats of a lawsuit from someone who, like Peterson, has
vast financial resources, even if the lawsuit is in fact frivolous
and groundless and would violate their rights if successful. To
deliberately intimidate people into silence by threatening coercion
that would violate their rights is itself a violation of their
rights: their rights to speak freely.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jordan Peterson is
the biggest kid in the schoolyard, and he is picking on little kids
who have no way to harm him, but who do seem to be able to make him
very very angry. He is simply a bully, and like any bully he is
violating the rights of others: in this case, rights to freedom of
speech.</div>
Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-11097901276591802482018-06-30T15:47:00.001-05:002018-07-02T18:39:44.106-05:00Jordan Peterson Is No Friend of Free Speech<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }</style>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mqmrktlkvC4/Wzfq363VG6I/AAAAAAAAB40/XezVNjYAUNAIu6zmIxxKaN7NzatyCp8FwCLcBGAs/s1600/index.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mqmrktlkvC4/Wzfq363VG6I/AAAAAAAAB40/XezVNjYAUNAIu6zmIxxKaN7NzatyCp8FwCLcBGAs/s1600/index.jpeg" /></a></div>
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The worst enemies of
a controversial opinion are not those who use facts and logic against
it. If the opinion has any value, such opposition will only make the
opinion stronger and better by provoking better arguments in its
favor, or by leading its proponents to to revise it so that it
becomes a more nuanced and fully-rounded picture of reality. John
Stuart Mill pointed this out long ago, in <i>On Liberty</i>.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
No, a much more
damaging opponent is the <i>pro</i>ponent whose behavior is so venal and
hypocritical that it gives the impression that people who defend the
view have ulterior motives or do not mean what they say. This can
bring on a phenomenon that I call “turning off the microphone”:
proponents can talk and talk but people will not hear their words.
The words will be perceived as a cover for something else, which what
is really going on. Turning off the microphone can be a much more
effective way to silence an opinion than threatening proponents with
legal punishments.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jordan Peterson is
the most conspicuous proponent of free speech in the mass media right
now -- unfortunately. He recently discredited himself as a proponent by<a href="http://torontosun.com/news/provincial/peterson-launches-defamation-suit-against-wilfrid-laurier-university"> launching one law suit</a>
and <a href="https://mic.com/articles/189822/free-speech-champion-jordan-peterson-threatens-to-sue-professor-over-twitter-name-calling#.RNwvNwaZC">threatening another</a> – for things professors have said about
him! He even tells one interviewer that his motive it to get
professors “to be a bit more careful with what they say.” This
of course has been the motive of censors throughout history. Watch
what you say, buddy!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Thus he strengthens the case for the old Stanley Fish line that nobody really cares about how much freedom of speech there is, they only care about how it is distributed. It tends to justify the attitude that was pilloried in the title of Nat Hentoff's classic book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Free-Speech-Me-But-Not-Thee/dp/0060995106/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530390307&sr=1-1&keywords=Freedom+of+speech+for+me%2C+but+not+for+thee">Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee</a>. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
His justifications
for this behavior reveal his cluelessness as to what freedom of
speech is. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/the-jordan-peterson-tour-comes-to-aspen/563813/?utm_source=fbb">In one interview</a> he gives two
explanations for why his law suits are not inconsistent with his
status as a champion and standard-bearer for free speech. First, he claims that the
professors who compared his views to those of Hitler “were
breaking the law” in doing so. This is an almost incredibly lame
argument. As any bright freshman would notice right away, it
begs the question – obviously! – of whether the law in question, and his use of it, are themselves violations of the right of free speech. He seems
oblivious to this obvious point. His second explanation is
marginally less lame:
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
But there’s always risk in every decision, there’s the risk of
doing something, and there’s the risk of not doing something. Both
of those risks are usually catastrophic in every decision that you
make in life. So I weighed up the risks and I thought, no, the risk
here of not doing something is greater than the risk of doing
something.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Once again, this is
the point of view of the <i>opponents</i> of free speech. Any time you hear
someone say that they are going to have to “weigh” or “balance”
your freedom of speech against some other value, you can bet that
they are going to favor violating your right of free speech. A
freedom as fundamental as speech is not about weighing or balancing
or compromising anything.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The most familiar
argument for the contrary idea fails completely to support it: this
is the idea that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater – because
it is just too risky. As Alan Dershowitz pointed out once in a
lecture, this case is actually not about speech at all. I would be
committing exactly the same offense if I simply hit the fire alarm
switch, saying absolutely nothing. If someone randomly murders
several people by deliberately causing a panic, we will not prosecute
them for expressing bad ideas or harmful attitudes. The charge will
be some sort of homicide. Some acts that violate rights involve the use of words and some do not. What is legitimately a crime is not a viewpoint expressed by the words but the act of which they are a part.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
To judge by his behavior, Peterson's advocacy of free speech seems to be an attempt to get something he wants -- for himself and people who agree with him. That he views it as a right possessed by everyone, even those who say things that he finds abhorrent, is very doubtful at this point. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Advocates of freedom of speech who think that Peterson is their ally should turn their backs on him. You are known by your associations, and association with him can only contaminate you.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-30913510966419633472018-01-18T02:43:00.001-06:002018-06-30T15:56:40.118-05:00L’Affaire Ansari, or: Why Etiquette is Important<a href="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/01/RTX21ROO/lead_960.jpg?1515973359" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="800" height="190" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/01/RTX21ROO/lead_960.jpg?1515973359" width="320" /></a> Well, the <a href="https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/01/16/25715814/counterpoint-why-your-defense-of-aziz-ansari-makes-you-a-tone-deaf-asshole">internet slime machine</a> went to work on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/">Caitlyn Flanagan’s piece on <i>L’Affaire</i> Ansari</a> right away.<br />
<br />
She’s defending Ansari! She’s blaming the victim! I don’t see her as doing either of these things. I think she is suggesting that we should have a conversation about important matters that seem to have somehow dropped off the map. She points out that, when she was the age of the pseudonymous “Grace,” young women read articles, even books, that in effect were guides to how to avoid being victimized by men. Women her age discussed and thought about ideas that could be express as rough rules of thumb, like these: “A date should not begin with your meeting him alone in his apartment/hotel room/house.” “Never drink alcohol alone with an older man you hardly know.” “Be willing to slap his face if necessary.” “Always have cabfare. If things go wrong, trusting him to take you home may be a bad idea.” For the most part, such ideas, and the issues raised by them, seem to be far, far from Grace’s mind. Should they be?<br />
<br />
The attitude behind much of the response to the Flanagan piece and the backlash against the #MeToo movement (a movement that I applaud) seems to be something like this: <i>There is a problem in the land, and the problem is that men are like Ansari.</i> What is the solution? <i>Men have to change. It’s their responsibility, not ours! </i> I agree. Change into what? <i>They have to respect women! </i>Agree again, but what does that mean in terms of concrete behavior? <i>Every step in a sexual encounter has to be consented to.</i> Fine. What does consent consist of, in terms of actual behavior? <i>Consent is not mere acquiescence. It’s more subtle than that. It can consist of non-verbal cues. The same is true of refusal of consent. Men have to learn to noice and respond to these things.</i><br />
<br />
It’s not that I disagree with any of the italicised statements above. It’s just this: You are asking for a moral revolution. Well, good! You might say I’m in the moral revolution business myself. Always have been. But if your revolution rests on cues that have to be given and noticed when you are both half-undressed and his tongue is in your yoohoo, then entirely too much work is being done by this abstract notion of “consent.” Your revolution is going nowhere, because it asks people to do something that they cannot do. You are asking them to regulate their conduct by abstractions with little obvious concrete meaning.<br />
<br />
At the beginning of this republic, Thomas Jefferson realized that the old notions of etiquette and courtesy, which were aristocratic and based on respect for hierarchy, would have to be demolished and replaced by a new democratic etiquette based on respect for everybody. Obviously, the demolition did happen, but Jefferson’s dream of a new etiquette of respect for persons never took place. Courtesy was replaced with – nothing. “Respect” and “consent” are not replacements, because they are high-level abstractions. They need low-level rules of thumb in order to be applied to actual conduct. Does a guy who suggests that a first date begin with a woman coming into his apartment, alone, and drink with him, thereby show a lack of respect for her? I think it is arguable that he does, but my point really is that, whether he does or not, thinking about whether the question gives your idea more body and heft than a mere gaseous abstraction. Etiquette and casuistry are where the rubber of moral principle hits the road of conduct. We need to talk about things like this. And trying to shame those who bring it up into silence by accusing them of “blaming the victim” is really not helpful at all.Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-86395160114237461562012-12-27T13:58:00.000-06:002018-01-18T15:36:38.860-06:00Saul Alinsky's Rules<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RzNA7kJcN-k/Sgtyi8ZEJkI/AAAAAAAABGw/KWlqZ1r8m04/s1600-h/Alinsky.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335484128202860098" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RzNA7kJcN-k/Sgtyi8ZEJkI/AAAAAAAABGw/KWlqZ1r8m04/s320/Alinsky.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 251px;" /></a><br />
In the right-wing blogosphere there has long been a theme that says that Obama is a disciple of the old lefty, Saul Alinsky, and that he and Hillary Clinton are (literally) playing from his rulebook, an actual book called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Radicals-Saul-Alinsky/dp/0679721134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242275591&sr=1-1">Rules for Radicals</a>. Hillary's senior thesis at Wellesley was on Alisnky, so they say. I'm not interested in that issue. BHO's behavior won't look any worse (or better) to me depending on where he learned it. But some quotes from that book interested me.<br />
<br />
I don't really know anything about this guy, except that leftists often mention him as as a sort of wise, lovable old coot, a sort of leftie Yoda.<br />
<br />
I found an electronic copy of the book and read (most, I think) of a chapter titled "Tactics." My jaw dropped. The core of the chapter is thirteen tactical rules for changing the world (in good ways, supposedly). Most of them belong with the sort of tactical advice you can read in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Prince</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Mein Kampf</span>.<br />
<br />
Yoda he is not. Look at this. (And as you read, try to imagine Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Gandhi, or Thoreau saying any of this.)<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."</span><br />
<br />
One thing this seems to mean, if we read it in connection with some of the rules that follow, is that his goal is to intimidate those who disagree with him, controlling them through fear, and not to convince them of something by appealing to their mind or conscience. Note also that this power seems to be based on deception of some sort.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.</span>Rule 2 is actually good advice. Base your arguments on your own experience and that of your audience. Knowing that your case is based on solid evidence increases confidence and dispels fear. But notice that he applies this valid principle in reverse against others.<i> Spreading this disabling fear far and wide</i> is just what Rule 3 advises.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span><br />
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This rule might have been defensible if it meant that you should expose hypocrisy or take advantage of the impracticality of your opponent's moral code. But that is not what he has in mind. He says that everyone is vulnerable to this tactic, not just hypocrites. And the example he gives, of answering every letter, is actually a decent and sensible rule. He is advising you to take advantage, not of your opponents' hypocrisy and foolishness, but of their decency and their ideals. And to take advantage of the fact that they can't do something that, according to him, nobody could do anyway.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force </span>[note his word choice here] <span style="font-weight: bold;">the enemy into concessions.</span><br />
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I take it the idea here is something like this. Instead of engaging in a debate with Dick Cheney about the ethics of torture -- where you'll end up dealing with a mass of theories and supposed facts -- make fun of him for shooting his friend in the face on a hunting expedition.. If you do it right, people will just start to snicker when he shows up on TV. They won't hear a word he says. It will be just as though you have turned off his microphone. If you are really lucky, he will lose his temper and look even worse.<br />
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As with Rule 13, below, the basic strategy here is the respond to speech by delegitimizing the speaker. I can't think of a single practice (short of the use of threats and violence) that is more deeply inimical to the basic principles of civilized discourse.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.</span><br />
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In other words, disable his opponent's capacity to reason.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;"> RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.</span><br />
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Need I say more?<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 10: The major premise of tactics is the development of operations that will maintain constant pressure on the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.</span><br />
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Translation: Provoke your opponents to doing irrational things that are not in their interest, but are in yours.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 11: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.</span><br />
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Get them to abandon reason altogether and resort to violence. Now you are a martyr. Yay! you win!<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">RULE 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.</span><br />
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I think this rule is the most evil one of the lot, partly for the reason I gave under Rule 5. But there is more.<br />
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I have long been convinced that the problems in the world are due to bad institutions and not ultimately to bad people. Bad institutions reward bad behavior, punish good behavior and distort people's ideas. When bad people<span style="font-style: italic;"> are</span> at the center of things, it is generally because we have created an institution in which the only people who can flourish are ones with <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=eTve6XEUbYIC&dq=hayek+why+the+worst+rise+to+the+top&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=zNONSxMNel&sig=kh88l5j5QTmcHgWcIiS3erqpg00&hl=en&ei=IksMSoKNDdCUkAWY2f2YBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA138,M1">certain moral vices</a>.<br />
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This truth, that "it's not the people, it's the system," was one of Marx's most distinctive ideas, and it is responsible for what is true in his doctrine.<br />
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It makes it hard to reform the world, however, because people don't get energized about "institutions," and even find them difficult to think about. The issue has to be personalized somehow.<br />
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What Alinsky is recommending is that you personalize the issue in the cheapest, most duplicitous, and cruelest way: pick out hate figures and demonize them.<br />
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If old Saul's disciples are indeed in the saddle, we are headed straight for Nastyville. I'm not going to enjoy the ride one bit.Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-3324651484976269972012-12-21T15:28:00.000-06:002018-06-30T15:59:20.126-05:00Ban Big Ammunition Magazines?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-loGZKC-QlF0/UNP42Ni6O6I/AAAAAAAABu0/rXUg8r4y6nk/s1600/4-Magazine-for-n30-shot-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-loGZKC-QlF0/UNP42Ni6O6I/AAAAAAAABu0/rXUg8r4y6nk/s320/4-Magazine-for-n30-shot-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The other day I posted about something I call the weapons line drawing problem: Some weapons or weapon features or accessories
should be banned, and some should not. This means the real question is,
where to draw the line? What is the principle that separates the permissible from the ban-able?<br />
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The principle I offered was "the ultra-hazardous weapon principle": A weapon, weapon feature, or accessory may be banned if it cannot be used safely. The idea is that if you are using such a device, it is too likely that you will eventually be subjecting those around you to an unreasonable level of risk from which they gain no benefit. Since you have no right to do that, banning it would not violate your rights. <br />
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I argued that civilian "assault weapons" pass this test and my not be banned without violating individual rights. What about large ammunition magazines and clips -- ones with more that 10, 20, or 30 (different limits exist in different states) round capacities? Obama is <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/19/16020864-obama-demands-concrete-proposals-on-gun-violence-by-january">pushing hard </a>for Congress to act quickly, I would even say precipitately, and it's likely they will place some nation-wide limit on magazine and clip size.(From now on I'll say "magazine" to refer to both, though that's<a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?q=magazine+clips&hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=caqkbXMRk6M0dM:&imgrefurl=http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2009/10/24/difference-between-a-magazine-and-a-clip/&docid=c-dQ-fsZs5hqnM&imgurl=http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ClipMagazineLesson.jpg&w=344&h=415&ei=mNDUUNjPNKKY2wWq94HABg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=1652&sig=109177986860321636397&page=1&tbnh=115&tbnw=96&start=0&ndsp=8&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:73&tx=27&ty=54&biw=800&bih=405"> technically not correct</a>.)<br />
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Clearly, such a ban is not supported by the ultra-hazardous weapon principle. It is easy to use a large magazine safely. Millions of responsible citzens use them on shooting range and (where legal, I hope) for hunting with no one getting hurt.<br />
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But notice that my principle only rules things <i>in</i> as candidates for banning -- it "<i>may</i> be banned" -- and doesn't rule anything out. Maybe large magazines may be nominated as candidates for banning on the basis of some supplementary principle. One reason I have seen given by talking heads lately as a reason for banning these things is that they "serve no legitimate purpose."<br />
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I would flesh this out like this: a weapon, weapon feature, or accessory may be banned if it has criminal uses and serves no legitimate purpose for which there is no perfectly good substitute, <br />
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I have some sympathy for this a s a general principle. The intuitive idea, I guess, is that such a ban would interfere with criminal acts and, though it would coercively deny the object to innocent people, the coercion involved does them no harm. I'm not generally keen on coercing (ie., threatening) the innocent at all (it violates <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=hAi3CdjXlQsC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=%22the+libertarian+constraint%22&source=bl&ots=OGm7o1mrpL&sig=FsSKiFThfy6jasRKcJo12nIGKLA&hl=en#v=snippet&q=%22a%20libertarian%20side%20constraint%22&f=false">the libertarian side constraint</a><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=hAi3CdjXlQsC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=%22the+libertarian+constraint%22&source=bl&ots=OGm7o1mrpL&sig=FsSKiFThfy6jasRKcJo12nIGKLA&hl=en#v=snippet&q=%22a%20libertarian%20side%20constraint%22&f=false">)</a>, but it if does them no harm, I'm at least willing to consider it.<br />
<br />
There is another problem with this principle, though. It's not so easy to think of an object currently in use in the civilian population that has no legitimate use for which it lacks perfect substitute. Some years ago, I was working on a paper on gun owners' rights (<a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40441243?uid=3739792&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101582348427">this one</a>) and I tried to propose an example of a weapon that would fail this test and could well be banned: in fact, it already is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawed-off_shotgun#United_States">more or less illegal</a> throughout the US. The example was sawed-off shotguns. This weapon, I said, emits a spray of projectiles, any one of which can cause a nasty injury, and cannot be controlled very well by the shooter (I could have argued just as plausibly, or implausibly, using the ultra-hazardous weapon principle, but I had not thought of it yet).<br />
<br />
<br />
Anyway, my editor for that paper, <a href="http://www.philosophy.uconn.edu/department/wheeler/index.htm">Samuel C. Wheeler</a>, pointed something out to me. This weapon could be very appropriate as an answering-the-door gun for an elderly gentleman who, say, lives in a dangerous neighborhood (it's the best he can afford) and has had his Social Security check stolen and been mugged, and so has legitimate concerns about his safety. At close quarters, like ansering the door in and apartment building, the projectiles can be controlled quite well enough. Plus, the pellets will not pass through the opposite wall of the hallway, injuring the innocent.<br />
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I deleted that part of the manuscript.<br />
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Another problem with the "no legitimate purpose" principle: grading or ranking purposes. After all, there is one legitimate purpose that is served by a big magazine, and there is no conceivable substitute: reloading avoidance. Not having to reload so often. Nothing illegitimate about that. <br />
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Obviously, the principle has to include a qualification about how the purpose has to be "important" enough to qualify. Maybe the fact that it serves mere convenience is not enough.<br />
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I don't know about you, but I'm still enough of a liberal to get queasy about deciding whether a purpose -- someone <i>else's</i> purpose -- is "important" enough to exempt them from heavy fines or a jail sentence. It is something the law has to do from time to time, but I would like to keep it to a minimum.<br />
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Finally, to get back the the big magazine issue itself: I believe these things do pass the "no legitimate purpose"test." To see why, take a look at <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336006/high-capacity-magazine-bans-clayton-e-cramer">this compelling essay</a> by history professor Clayton Cramer. You'll see that not having to reload can make a life or death difference in situations that civilians do find themselves in from time to time. Indeed, this feature might be more valuabe to the law-abiding than it is to mass shooters. Further, not only can they save innocent lives, but they can even enable you to safely spare the life of your assailants. If that sounds impossible, just read the essay. Please.<br />
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____________________________________________<br />
On a somewhat related not, here is<a href="http://poseidonian.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/repost-how-gun-talk-is-misperceived/"> a very interesting post</a> by my old friend, philosophy prof and sci fi aficionado Kevin Hill.Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-43780848260262846342012-12-19T01:18:00.000-06:002019-09-14T17:02:57.750-05:00Ban "Assault Rifles"?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<img border="0" height="117" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y7_tgvomt1g/UNFCp6qoRdI/AAAAAAAABuU/3UgJvCB9aDE/s400/ar15.jpeg" width="400" />Okay, so most of us can agree on two important things: Some weapons or weapon features or accessories
should be banned, and some should not. This means the real question is,
where to draw the line? What is the principle? This is a very important question, and I've thought about it a lot. The answer I've come up with was heavily influenced by American tort law. Case law has evolved organically under the guidance of some very smart, well-meaning people who have guided it while in full-frontal contact with reality. They are dealing with<i> cases,</i> not their own fantasies. So it deserves to be taken seriously. </div>
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There is a concept in the law that is useful here: that of "ultra-hazardous" activities, also know as "abnormally dangerous activities." Both terms are a little misleading, because what makes an activity ulltra-hazardous is not so much the degree of danger as the lack of control you have it. Classic examples are: crop-dusting, drilling for oil, transporting gasoline by truck, blasting. I think of these as activities that<i> can't be done safely</i>. What the law does with these activities is this: if it produces some economic good that goes into the marketplace and people find it worthwhile to pay for, you may do it, though if things go wrong we will hold you strictly liable for the results (look it up - it's different from the rule that applies to normally dangerous activities) If it does not produce such results, you may not do it. So, even if playing involuntary Russian roulette on your neighbor's head is less risky than drilling for oil, you may not do it.<br />
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There is an important distinction to be made between the abnormally hazardous and that which is normally hazardous. I think a related idea applies to weapons, and with similar reasoning. Some weapons <i>cannot be used safely. </i>And since your neighbors are not being compensated, by means of some economic good being made available to them, for the risk they are subjected to, there is no reason they should put up with it. That means you can't have nuclear weapons, bazookas, hand grenades, incendiary grenades, or a machine gun.<br />
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Notice, and this is very important, that a modern gun, as such, is not (to coin a phrase paralleling the above legal one) an ultra-hazardous weapon. In fact, it is in one way the opposite of that. If used at the range at which it was intended to shoot, a modern firearm, in contrast to the old muskets and flintlock pistols, is a precision instrument. I like to tell my students that if I had a good pistol I could dot the "i" in that exit sign at the other end of the lecture hall. (Some of them look startled.)<br />
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An AR-15 is a precision instrument and not an ultra-hazardous weapon, in my sense. It is not a machine gun. <br />
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This brings me to the reason I put "assault weapons" in scare quotes, above. True assault rifles were invented for the military during WWII (in Germany and Russia). The military definition is: (a) a medium range rifle that (b) has a selector that switches the weapon between fully automatic and semi-automatic. Select "fully" and it becomes a machine gun.<br />
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The latter clause is why the AR-15 (pictured above) such as the one the Sandy Hook murderer used, does not fit the military definition of an assault rifle. It lacks this switch and only has the semi-automatic mode of functioning.<br />
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What "semi-automatic" means is this. When you fire a bullet, the mechanism uses some of the energy expended to do three things: expel the spent cartridge, move a new bullet into the chamber, and cock the firing pin (this is called cycling). To fire, all you need to do is pull the trigger (this is called single action trigger).<br />
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In a semiauto weapon, only the cycling is automatic. The firing is not: ie., the gun does not keep cycling and firing, both, if you just hold the trigger down. <br />
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A typical revolver, like the S & W .38 I inherited from my Dad, accomplishes somewhat the same effect of a semiauto by means of a <i>double action</i> trigger: as I pull the trigger, it rotates the cylinder, moving the spent cartridge out of the way, presenting a fresh round to the firing pin, and cocking it. (I just timed myself and got up to four shots per second. The gun was unloaded, of course.) Doing all that work with your trigger finger makes the weapon less accurate, unless you have a really fine, smooth-shooting revolver like the Colt Python, but that would run you around $1,500.<br />
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Hm. Maybe you'd rather have a semi-automatic pistol, like the classic Colt 1911 (named for the year it became standard issue in the US Army). This highly esteemed weapon is just as automatic as the AR-15, except for one thing: before the first shot you fire, you must cock it manually by pulling back the slide. Thereafter it cycles automatically.<br />
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Or, if you want to avoid that one little hitch, you might try one of the many kinds of semiauto pistols where the trigger is double action on the first shot, single action thereafter, and auto cylcing throughout. These weapons are exactly as automatic as the AR-15.<br />
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Now you can probably guess what my point is: These "automatic" weapons have been extremely common for a long time. They have been standard military issue for a century. They are carried by virtually all armed police officers. There are millions and millions of them in the possession of civilians who use them for entirely legitimate purposes.<br />
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As a matter of fact, they are the weapon of choice of mass murderers, <a href="https://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2012/12/18/top-10-myths-about-mass-shootings/">overwhelmingly preferred </a>to weapons like the AR-15.<br />
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It's easy to see why. These weapons, as I have said, are made for medium range shooting: shooting at enemy coming over the next hill. Not for long range sniping, and not for shooting somebody in the same room with you. Hell, it has a 20-inch barrel, for medium range accuracy. What do you need that for, when your victim is in the same room with you? You've accepted the weapon's bulkiness, clumsiness (at close quarters), and conspicuousness, and gotten nothing in return. You are better off with a 1911 and a bag of loaded magazines over your shoulder.<br />
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[I don't mean this in a crass way. Innocent lives are at stake and to figure out what we should do about it we have to take no-BS way about what these demented dirtbags are actually going to do.]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PT5lxD972cU/UNFnCqc5KzI/AAAAAAAABuk/8xN9558oIIU/s1600/1911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PT5lxD972cU/UNFnCqc5KzI/AAAAAAAABuk/8xN9558oIIU/s1600/1911.jpg" /></a>The "automaticness" of these "automatic" weapons does not make them "ultrahazardous," in the sense in which that could justify banning them, and they give the mass murderer no advantage they couldn't get from weapons that are extremely common and <i>obviously</i> legitimate. It is no reason to ban them as a response to mass shootings. None.<br />
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There actually is another issue here that I have not touched on. There is one difference between AR-type weapons and pistols like the 1911: magazine size. The magazine in Lanza's AR may have held as many rounds as 30 (the max allowed in the state of CT). Magazine size of a 1911: 6. Is that a reason to limit the size of magazines (in effect, banning all larger than the limit)?<br />
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I'll try to post about that later.Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-11093891494826969272012-12-16T16:19:00.000-06:002012-12-17T00:29:55.933-06:00Why Can't These People Say "Christmas"?<div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;">
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I was startled to notice this morning that I first posted this five years ago --- five years ago yesterday, to be exact. Startled because the Food Network is still doing the kind of weird crap I describe here, and because I can republish it with minimal revision. I have changed the style a little to elevate the tone of moral disgust, also to add a new item at the end.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RzNA7kJcN-k/R2VXkR0t4MI/AAAAAAAAAXM/6a4Ubp8LB2k/s1600-h/Image001.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5144614430112080066" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RzNA7kJcN-k/R2VXkR0t4MI/AAAAAAAAAXM/6a4Ubp8LB2k/s400/Image001.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 76px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 478px;" /></a><br />
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Watching the Food Network a couple of days after Thanksgiving, I noticed something that gave me the creeps. None of the regulars seemed to be able to say "Christmas." (<span style="font-style: italic;">No, this is not some Bill O'Reilly war-against-Christmas BS! At least I hope not. Please read on!)</span> Tyler Florence pours red and green sauces on on enchilada and Guy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Fieri</span></span> says, "Boy those are some holiday colors!" Sandra Lee is wearing a red sweater and making evergreen-tree-shaped cookies, and she keeps calling the "holiday cookies."<br />
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Right away I got this weird feeling. <span style="font-style: italic;">These people are not free. Someone off-camera is pointing a gun at them. The evil gnomes who run the Food Network Corporate Borg are compelling them to speak this weird jargon, probably just to degrade and humiliate them.</span> (This could also explain those creepy claymation figures -- see the picture above.) Is this going on at other channels? Has the whole world gone insane while I was paying attention to other things? I really don't know, as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Food Network</span></span> is almost the only channel I can stand to watch (and <span style="font-style: italic;">it</span> sucks, but I won't go into that now).<br />
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What could possibly be the<i> problem</i> with saying the word "Christmas" in public? Below are some more or less random observations on this baffling question. Most of what I am about to say is pretty obvious and far from original, but I think it is worth saying anyway. Apparently, it is not obvious to <i>some</i> people.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Yes, not everyone celebrates Christmas.</span> And it might, conceivably, just barely conceivably, be unpleasant to be wished "Merry Christmas" when you do not. As a university professor, I sometimes find myself in a room full of people who are talking about how bad conservatives, Republicans, or libertarians are, as if they assume I am a Democrat like themselves. So I have some sympathy for people in that situation. But not very much. After all, the people in my roomful of Democrats are saying that people like me are morally or intellectually inferior to people like them. They are insulting me. The person who wishes you Merry Christmas is not. In fact, he or she is wishing you well. They are trying to be nice.<br />
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My Golden Rule is: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Never, ever make someone sorry that they were nice to you. </span>Centuries ago, Thomas Hobbes said that this is one of the most basic rules of civil society. He was right Violating it is one of the most ignoble and stupid things you can do.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">The problem is not that there are other holidays at this time of the year.</span> You can celebrate more than one. In our house, we always celebrate both <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Hanukkah</span></span> and Christmas. Holidays don't exclude on another, religions do. By wishing somebody a Merry Christmas, or using the word to describe a cookie, you are not excluding anybody from anything.<br />
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Admittedly it is true that Kwanzaa was invented by the Marxist Prof. Ron <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Karenga</span></span> as an "alternative" -- <i>his word </i>-- to Christmas. He did intend his holiday to be exclusionist. But apparently, the African-Americans who celebrate it today<a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/et_hd_kwanzaa/article/0,1972,FOOD_9838_5662540,00.html"> do not see it that way</a>. (As often happens, the hearts of "ordinary" people have proved sounder than those of the supposedly wise men who seek to lead them for their own good.)<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Nor is the problem that not everyone is a Christian. </span> <a href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr009=nivxku9lm2.app1a&news_iv_ctrl=1263&page=NewsArticle&id=7632">Even atheists love Christmas</a>. As I have said, the problem, so far as there is one, is merely that not everyone celebrates Christmas. So try avoid wishing Merry Christmas to someone who does not celebrate it.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Often, banning the C-word is simply hypocrisy.</span> None of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">FN</span></span> "holiday" specials that I saw contained a single reference to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Hanukkah</span>, Kwanzaa, or anything but Christmas. By banning the C-word, they are pretending to an inclusiveness that they do not practice. To the minor sin of non-inclusiveness they add the major one of lying about it.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">If you are talking about a holiday, and the holiday in question is indeed Christmas, there is no possible harm in calling it that.</span> There is no excuse for saying "holiday cookie." None. If it is shaped like a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">dredl</span></span>, call it a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Hanukkah</span> cookie. If it is shaped like one of those trees, call it a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Christmas</span> cookie. If you don't, you'll just sound like an idiot.<br />
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Please join me this "holiday" season in trying to avoid this canting hypocrisy.<br />
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<i><b>Update: </b>And now, here is fellow atheist Penn Jillette, with a different take. Notice that he is not answering the sort of argument I am giving here. He is answering the O'Reilly notion that this is an "attack on Christianity." That of course is not what I am saying. On the other hand, he does seem to be saying one thing that I have been arguing against: that refraining from "Christmas" is being inclusive.</i><br />
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Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-13068553658400074682012-12-14T23:13:00.001-06:002018-08-04T18:07:38.098-05:00Mass Shootings Are Irrelevant to the Issue of Gun Control<span style="font-size: small;">In the approxaminately 1/3 million words I have written in this blog (not counting comment section!) I fear I may have said everything I have to say about everything that interests me. In the space of two days we have had two horrific mass shootings by horribly disturbed people -- the shootings placed occuring, with a symbolism worthy of the Prince of Darkness himself -- on the opposite coasts of this country. Since both shooters used "assault weapons" renewed calls for banning such weapons have arisen everywhere. (BTW, if I get time tomorrow, I will write a new -- yes, new! -- post explaining why I put scare quotes around "assault weapons.") After the "Batman shootings" last Summer, I wrote a blog post arguing that such horrors are the weakest possible reasons for gun control, and that those who think otherwise are actually not being moved by reason, but by emotion. Except for correcting some typos and making a few other small changes, I stand by it as written. So here it is (with those changes: ----
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<span style="font-size: small;"> In the wake of mass shootings like the one in Aurora Colorado, there are always renewed calls for gun control. This familiar phenomenon is a testament to human imperviousness to facts and logic, as such shootings are. of all gun-related deaths, the least likely to be deterred by gun laws.
The worst such shooting, ever, happened in Norway (death toll 77) and the worst K-12 school shooting [until yesterday] happened in Erfurt Germany (18 dead). Both countries have gun laws that are far more constraining than those of the USA. As John Lott points out<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/229929/gun-control-and-mass-murders/john-r-lott-jr"> here,</a></span><span style="font-size: small;"> four of the five worst school shootings ever happened in western Europe, within the boundaries of gun control heaven. The harsh, stringent gun laws of these countries failed to save the lives of the victims of these atrocities.</span>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Possibly the oldest utilitarian argument against gun control was voiced by Cesare Beccaria in 1764</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(HT to Charles C. W. Cooke):</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The laws of this nature are those which forbid one to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and more arbitry injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">This argument applies best of all to mass shooters like James Holmes. Like most such people, Holmes did not suddenly "snap." He planned his atrocity well in advance, beginning at least four months ago, with great patience and determination, accumulating an arsenal of weapons as well as elaborate body armor, and elaborately booby-trapping his apartment. It is obvious that someone who will shoot seventy completely innocent and defenseless strangers in a darkened theater is not going to be deterred by "oh, I can't buy that weapon -- it's illegal," and it's also pretty clear to me that Holmes would have had the determination to get weapons from an illegal source. Like drug laws, gun bans do not make the banned item disappear, rather they drive it into the netherworld of criminal commerce.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>If you are going to advocate a law based on a single horrific case, then that law has to be one that would have prevented that horror.</i> Otherwise, that one case is, logically, completely irrelevant to whether that law was a good thing or not. And gun bans would do nothing to prevent and atrocity like Aurora.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Having said this, I have to admit that the principle I have just placed in italics, which makes perfect sense to me, seems to have no effect on most my fellow human beings. When Oswald murdered Kennedy with a gun purchased through mail order, Congress responded by passing a law that banned such purchases. Even at the time, as a teenager, it was obvious to me that, whatever the reasons for such a law might be, the Kennedy assassination was not one of them. Who could think that Oswald would not have killed Kennedy, or tried to kill General Walker, if he could not have gotten his cheap Mannlicher-Carcano through the mail?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Mass shootings like Aurora are not good reasons for weapons bans; they are emotionally powerful symbols of violence. Those who are moved to ban a weapon by such incidents are acting on emotion and not on the basis of reason. Especially in the realm of the law, that is a terribly dangerous thing to do.*
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">* This is why laws that are named after people -- such as <a href="http://www.northjersey.com/towns/other_town_meetings/125894138_A_false_sense_of_security.html">"Megan's Law"</a> -- are usually a bad idea.</span> </span></div>
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Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-61407628540412015692012-12-12T17:15:00.000-06:002012-12-12T17:15:29.647-06:00The Death Penalty: Bad Arguments on Both Sides<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fu6R-zFK-gs/Tn_QSjiMevI/AAAAAAAABqA/t2ixtDmmpN8/s1600/Troy-Davis.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656468674195520242" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fu6R-zFK-gs/Tn_QSjiMevI/AAAAAAAABqA/t2ixtDmmpN8/s320/Troy-Davis.gif" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 270px;" /></a><br />
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<i>I just learned that Troy Davis has been executed by the state of Georgia. The last time there was a wave of public discussion of his case, I wrote this. It still makes sense to me, though as I point out here, this is only half of the story.</i><br />
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In the wake of the Troy Davis (pictured) case a lot of people are thinking about capital punishment, including some arguments that seem silly to me. I just read<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278079/why-death-penalty-opponents-br-can-t-win-jonah-goldberg"> a column by Jonah Goldberg</a> that gives an argument for the death penalty that I find stupefyingly unconvincing. </div>
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Before I get to that, I want to point out that he says something about arguments for the other side that is simply not true:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 24px;"><i>Opponents of the death penalty believe that no one deserves to be executed. Again, it’s an honorable position, but a difficult one to defend politically in a country where the death penalty is popular. So they spend all of their energy cherry-picking cases, gumming up the legal system, and talking about “uncertainty.”</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 24px;">Well,<i> I'm</i> against the death penalty and, to be blunt, the idea that "no one deserves to be executed" has never made any sense to me. It seems to mean that nothing a human being can do is bad enough to deserve death. There seem to be so many obvious counterexamples to that claim that I would feel like I am taking cheap shots by citing one. I'll tell you what: please think of the most loathsome murder<i> you</i> have ever heard of. Surely if the person who did that were to be put to death as painlessly as possible, it would be no more than they deserve: in fact, a lot less.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 24px;">If it can be just for the state to punish someone at all, if they may rightly in some cases take away all of a person's liberty and property, and for the rest of their lives at that, and subject them to the degradation of life in prison, then why on Earth is it <i>necessarily</i> unjust if they also take a person's life? If they can take away everything that makes life worth living, what is so special, as far as desert is concerned, about taking that extra step? I have never understood that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 24px;">... So why am I against the death penalty? And what is the argument of Goldberg's that I think is so bad? I'll try to post about that tomorrow.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 24px;"><i>BTW, you can find my reply to Goldberg <a href="http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-i-am-against-death-penalty.html">here</a></i>.</span></span></div>
Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-25407446707389024652012-10-26T16:54:00.000-05:002012-10-29T17:33:17.340-05:00Conference on Gun Control at UW<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">The Wisconsin Center for the Study
of Liberal Democracy at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is presenting a
day-long conference on the moral and legal status of gun ownership today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">GUNS IN
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<i>Gun ownership by private citizens is one of the most hotly
debated issues in America today. What
should the legal status of gun ownership be?
Should the laws be more restrictive than they are now? Should they be less restrictive? What are the consequences of having so many
guns in private hands? For this
conference we have brought together researchers representing contrasting points
of view and four different academic disciplines for a thoughtful discussion of
these important questions.</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">All sessions will be held in The
Pyle Center. 702 Langdon Street Madison, WI, on Thursday November 1<sup>st</sup>,
2012. The event is free and open to the public.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">The conference schedule is as
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Session I: Legal Issues</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> (9:30-11:30)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">“The dimensions of self-defense
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Joseph Blocher (Duke University
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Carlisle Moody (Department of
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">"Whither the Right-to-Carry
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Stephen Hargarten (Medical College
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">“Gun Violence: The Strengths and Limits of the Disease
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Session III: Philosophical Issues</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">(3:00-5:00 pm)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Timothy Hall (Department of
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Jeff McMahan (Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">For further information, please
write to Deborah K. Hunt at </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="mailto:dkhunt@charter.net"><span class="SYSHYPERTEXT"><span style="font-family: Arial;">dkhunt@charter.net</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></div>
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Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-74976402744919544222012-09-11T15:00:00.002-05:002012-09-11T18:41:54.268-05:009/11 as a Religious Act<object height="315" width="420"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/S6nrJ3ByzzE?version=3&hl=en_US"></param>
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<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I just saw someone on TV commenting that there were no ceremonies today involving major politicialns, commemorating the anniversary of 9/11. "America is moving on." I'm hoping that means that it's okay to take this anniversary as an opportunity to say something that might really offend some people. This is a post I wrote 5 years ago, when I was reading a book by the late atheist Christopher Hitchens. (That is, it was not originally written on the occasion of an anniversary of 9/11.)</i></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">You know, of course, what prompted the "new atheism," the surge of books by Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet, as well as lesser luminaries, some of whom burn hotter if not as brilliantly. It's because of 9/11, the day that changed everything.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">That morning I rose late, about ten o'clock or so, and began what I expected would be a slow day. At noon my friend Don Downs of the Poli Sci Department was going to bring over some documents about a professor who had been de-tenured and fired by the Board of Regents, a case that we though raised some serious due process issues. We were thinking of trying to get the faculty senate to take a position on the case.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Quite unexpectedly, the front door bell rang. It was Don. I opened the door and looked at him sourly. "You're early," I said.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">He looked at my bathrobe. "You haven't turned your TV on yet, have you?" he asked.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"Why? What happened?"</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"Somebody flew a passenger plane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center and knocked it down."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"O my God," I said stupidly, "that must have killed hundreds of people."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"Oh, thousands," he corrected me.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The next thing I said was an angry outburst: "Do you see how wonderful religion is!? How it helps everyone to live together in peace?" Don looked startled.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">How did I know, instantly, that this was a religious act? I don't think I was even sure right away </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">which</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> religion was involved, but that religion was at to bottom of this seemed beyond doubt. You have to admit that, wherever there is widespread and persistent violence in the world, especially irrational vioulence -- whether it is on Ireland, Lebanon, Israel, Aghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka -- it is usually caused by religious differences. Hitchens argues convincingly that the last European war, the civil war in Yugoslavia, was really about religion as much as anything else. "Ethnic cleansing" was really religious cleansing. It was Christians killing Muslims, and doing so because the Muslims were Muslims and, most particularly, because the Christians were Christians.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Years later, it occurred to me that there was a simpler explanation of how I knew that this was a religious act. The clue lay in the fact that the violence on 9/11 was obviously suicidal. The pilots of those planes must have died together with their innocent victims. When we secular humanists commit an atrocity to make the world a better place, it is because we selfishly want to </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">live</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> in that better world. If the atrocity can't possibly have that motive, one knows at once the motive was religious. The statement an Islamist once made to a reporter, "We will win because we love death as much as you love life," surely is a profoundly religious statement.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STxfhEkiN-0/UE-X-xsxbQI/AAAAAAAABts/LBEuOBrRUvI/s1600/s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STxfhEkiN-0/UE-X-xsxbQI/AAAAAAAABts/LBEuOBrRUvI/s320/s.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Hitchens would quickly point out, and he would be right, that this does not really undermine his thesis. After all, the very worldliness of the secular is a constraint. If I want to live here with you, that is a tie between us. My selfish desire to live is something you can appeal to when I grow too indifferent or hostile to your interests. In the gravest extremity, when all else has failed, it makes possible the </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">ultima ratio, </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">the last of all reasons, the threat of death. Religious fanatics, with their "self-sacrificing," "altruistic" behavior (which incidentally are a fake self-sacrifice and spurious altruism in people who think that they will be rewarded with eternal bliss) cannot be appealed to in this way.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In view of this, why do we persist in associating religion with peace and public order? I do it myself! To some extent I think it is a sort of illusion of perspective. We in the liberal West have a distorted view of what religion is really like. </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">Our</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> religions have been corrupted by two centuries of contact with peaceful secular humanists. The idea that peace and public order are good things is by no means a product of religion: the three great monotheistic religions resisted it quite violently for many centuries. It arises from the sort of thinking that secularists have been doing all along: naturalistic thinking about life on earth.</span>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-21892928872189985862012-08-10T20:29:00.002-05:002012-08-10T20:31:58.788-05:00Who to Vote for on Tuesday?<div>
For the benefit of any libertarians out thee who might be voting in Tuesday's Republican Senate primary election here in Wisconsin, I'd like to quote a comment that the excellent <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8620800">Kirsten Lombard </a>made in a discussion on her Facebook page. As usual with Kirsten, it is logical, principled, and reveals the sort of specific information you can only get from an experienced foot soldier like her:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My vote is going to Mark Neumann.<br />
<br />
Mark has worked really hard to get
educated on constitutional and related liberty issues that matter
profoundly to me. He's the only guy talking credibly about the NDAA,
HR 347, state sovereignty, national sovereignty, and a range of other
issues.<br />
<br />
He's also demonstrated that he'll be
accessible to the grassroots. Just one prominent example: A fellow
organizer of mine is working on the Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Parkway
(FWHP) issue up in the Appleton area. He called Mark up to talk to
him about it. After 20 minutes, Mark said, "You know, I think
this requires a longer discussion and face time." So Mark asked
if this organizer would come with him on the campaign trail one day
so that as they were driving across the state, he could explain to
Mark more about the FWHP. He has now taken a principled position
against it...because he opened himself to being educated on the
issue. Educated by whom? By the grassroots.<br />
<br />
Same with Agenda 21. He didn't know
what it was when he showed up at my group to be vetted. He does now.
Once he knew he had a gap in his education, he worked hard to fill
it.<br />
<br />
He's going to listen to us. Will he
always agree with us? I can't promise that, and I'm guessing he can't
either. But one thing I know for sure is that he will hear us and
consider what we have to say...and on many issues where he's been
listening to us so far, there is agreement once he understands.<br />
<br />
That is really, really rare in
politicians and candidates most of whom just pretend they're
listening, dismiss you, or ignore you altogether. Mark is something
really special that way. He has truly EARNED my trust. I didn't just
give it to him. He worked for it.</blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As usual, I am open to counterarguments, but now my plan is to vote on Tuesday and to vote for Neumann.</div>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-12421330862145850712012-07-21T13:11:00.000-05:002012-12-14T22:33:05.210-06:00Renewed Calls for Gun Control<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYDWqKjRWAc/UArvpPo60yI/AAAAAAAABtU/BAnZGJFOwAw/s1600/289775-aurora-colorado-shooting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYDWqKjRWAc/UArvpPo60yI/AAAAAAAABtU/BAnZGJFOwAw/s320/289775-aurora-colorado-shooting.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>I recently did a count, crunched some numbers, and came up with an estimate that in this blog I have written one third of a million words, not counting the comments section ("oh, you can't count the comments!" David Bordwell said to me when I reported this factoid to him). </i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>By now I must have written on every single topic that I find interesting or important.</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>I was thinking of blogging about the renewed calls for gun control in the wake of the Aurora CO murders, but I realized I had already written about renewed calls for gun control in the wake of a mass murder. That was in April of 2007, when another maniac killed even more people on the campus of Virginia Tech. Here are some of my comments. I think that with some obvious adjustments they are applicable here.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>(<b>Warning</b>: Some of the ideas expressed below will shock and offend some people. At least, they did the first time I posted them.)</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The idea behind theses calls for more gun control is pretty simple: we have a problem here, and the problem is guns. The guns are the problem.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In a way, this is obviously true. Those people were killed with a gun. What may be a little less obvious, though, is that guns might be part of the solution as well. Notice that not one of the thirty three murder victims was armed. Is there any doubt that if even one of them had been, the outcome would have been less horrible than it was?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This a particularly poignant question, because in 2005 there was a bill in Virginia that would have allowed students with concealed-carry permits to bring their guns on campus, but </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/04/va_tech_official_praised_defea.php" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #de7008; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,sans-serif;">it died in committee.</a></span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> (Hat-tip to historian David Beito here.) The victims of this atrocity had been deliberately disarmed by their own government. Adding horribly to the irony of this is the fact that one Larry Hincker, a Virginia Tech spokesperson, praised the death of this bill:</span><br />
<blockquote style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">"I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions," Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, "because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.</span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Feel safe," maybe. But isn't </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: italic;">being safe</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> more important?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Notice that these shooting sprees are only ever seem to occur in places like schools, playgrounds, fast food restaurants, post offices. Why is there never a huge murderous rampage in a bar? Bars are full of people with poor impulse control. They have been working for hours at reducing their impulse control, shrinking their profit-horizons, and trashing their ability to distinguish right from wrong. Why don't you ever see the headline, "33 Killed in Saloon Rampage"?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There is a pretty obvious answer. The people in a bar may not be the nicest or most rational people in the world, but they all know that the bartender probably has a gun and a baseball bat behind the bar. They also know that he (or she!) would be happy to use them in order to maintain good order and public peace.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RzNA7kJcN-k/RiUYIal4ltI/AAAAAAAAAE4/c7qGmmNtaA4/s1600-h/100px-Black_ribbon.png" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #de7008; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,sans-serif;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5054472689649489618" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RzNA7kJcN-k/RiUYIal4ltI/AAAAAAAAAE4/c7qGmmNtaA4/s320/100px-Black_ribbon.png" style="border-width: 0px; cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">These killers go into schools and playgrounds because </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: italic;">they</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> feel safe there. Don't you think it is time to interfere with their government-given sense of security? If an armed professor or student had brought the Blacksburg killer down, it would have saved innocent lives immediately. It would also have given the next insane murderer reason to pause and go elsewhere, or maybe just to either seek help or keep his evil thoughts to himself.</span>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-42696011789014324452012-07-16T12:45:00.003-05:002012-07-16T19:32:53.009-05:00"If You've Got a Business, You Didn't Build That..."<object height="315" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YFK2_D3aBXo?version=3&hl=en_US"></param>
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<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>People in the right-o-shphere are going ballistic over the argument that the president gave yesterday for the governmemnent's taking back, through its power to tax, some of what society has gaven you over the years. I agree that this argument is a bad one, but it I am used to hearing it. I have seen it in many, many places. Here is a post I wrote on the occasion of Tax Day (April 15th) 2008 about it. I wrote it when I discovered that Herbert Simon, of all people, had given the same argument. (Simon must be the smartest person ever to use this argument. Must be.)</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Happy Tax Day! I hope you are enjoying the one day of the year when most people feel the same way about the state that I feel on the other 364. God knows I am not.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I was shocked to learn recently that the late Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate and former colleague of mine, once recycled, in a published essay, what is probably the worst of all moral justifications for taxation. As far as the morality of taxation is concerned, he is supposed to have said, the state would be perfectly justified in taking away 90% of the income of the people in the developed countries, as this is the amount of your product that is due to certain features of our social system. The most important of these features are probably these three: a relatively efficient and decent legal system, a government that (unlike most) is not simply a </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">kleptocracy</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">, and the vast stores of knowledge long accumulated by other participants in the economy. The government's taking 90% of what you own away from you, according to Simon, would merely be a matter of returning it to its real owners, which presumably is the people who comprise the state.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I can hardly believe that Simon said something so silly. He must be the wisest and smartest person ever to repeat this ridiculous argument. That is no doubt why we often see this idea attributed to him. It did not originate with him. Like many a bad joke, it is truly anonymous.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It is true of course that an enormous part of my income is made possible by the fact that I live in a half-way just, semi-free society, instead of one of the horrible Hell-holes in which many human beings have to live out their lives. If I taught philosophy in Russia or Mexico, instead of Madison Wisconsin, I would earn a very small fraction of what I earn here, even though I would be doing the same brilliant job that I am now doing. Why? Well, the people in those societies are working within political and legal systems that have been devastated by centuries of horrible government and rotten laws. As a result of this, the other participants in those economies have less powerful ideas, theories, methods, and skills -- in a word, less knowledge -- and are less productive than the people I deal with over here. In a system in which the government does not stop them from doing so, people come up with new and better ideas, year after year. Because of the human capacity for memory, the discoveries and inventions of past generations remain here after they have left the scene, and in some cultures the resulting total reaches truly staggering dimensions. Even though my brain contains the tiniest fraction of this total, living among these highly knowledgeable people is very beneficial to me. In general, it is to my advantage to trade with more prosperous, more productive people rather than less wealthy, less productive ones. (In case this is not obvious, think of it this way: those less prosperous people are going to pay me for my contributions with ... what?)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There is no harm in summarizing what I have just said by saying that a lot of my product is possible because of "the contribution of society," as long as we remember what that means. It means that a lot of fine people worked hard at developing good ideas about things and implementing those ideas by building institutions that endured after they departed. I owe these people my eternal gratitude. Gratitude, </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">not cash</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The reason is very simple. They all made their contributions in return for compensation, which they were paid by others. They may have wanted more in return than they actually got (don't we all?) but they regarded what they got as sufficient to offset all the trouble they went through to make their wonderful contributions to our way of life. We know this because we know that they did decide to actually take that trouble and make those contributions.* Why should you lose 90% of what you produce in order to compensate them for what they did? They have already been paid! (Not to mention the fact that the great majority of them are now dead.) This would mean paying them twice.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">By the way, doesn't this mean that I should be paid twice too? I contributed something too. It may not have been much, but I am still alive and can actually be compensated. Come to think of it, doesn't it also mean that I get my 90% back? But then where is all this money going to come from, now that we are paying everyone twice what they produce?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Actually, I should say that Simon </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">would</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> be proposing to pay everyone twice, </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">if</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> the money were really going to the actual contributors, the heroes who make this wonderful life possible. But of course it isn't. Simon wants the state to get it. Why on Earth should it get </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic;">any</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> of this money? Insofar as the state makes any contribution to my product, this contribution was the work of individuals who have been compensated** and at any rate would never see any of Simon's vast pile of loot.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So this argument is rotten for two reasons: 1) the real contributors have already been compensated, and 2) the </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">alleged</span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> compensation would actually go to the wrong people anyway. Like I say, worst argument yet.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">________________________________________</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* For simplicity, I am ignoring the fact that some contributors were defrauded or coerced. Some were literally enslaved. Those people were not adequately compensated. Maybe we should compensate their heirs. But this is not the sort of compensation that Simon is talking about. It would not justify payments to the state, but only to the heirs of victims. (Also, note that most of these past injustices were actually committed by the state -- and its hangers-on, such as slave-owners.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">** Furthermore, their contribution consisted in large part in restraining the power of the state, which becomes predatory and extremely destructive if not restrained, and subjecting it to the rule of law. If it weren't for them, the state would mainly be pursuing its ancient calling of conquering, pillaging, and murdering. Moreover, these brave men and women were often paid by the state for their efforts with torture, imprisonment, dishonor, and death. Maybe the state owes them, and their heirs, something?</span>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-21761719195216929882012-07-10T16:56:00.002-05:002012-07-16T19:34:13.467-05:00Meet My Little Friend, Crotalus viridis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QJSqD_Qp_OU/T_yigB_idtI/AAAAAAAABtI/rWBCqfxv4b4/s1600/Crotalus.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QJSqD_Qp_OU/T_yigB_idtI/AAAAAAAABtI/rWBCqfxv4b4/s320/Crotalus.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
I almost stepped on this Prairie Rattlesnake last night around sunset. In fact, I would have if it weren't for his sudden and furious rattle. What a startling sound! Literally: It gave me a huge startle response. It starts out like a triple forte blast on some weird kind of percussion instrument and just keeps going. I jumped back before I knew what was going on. <br />
<br />
Odd that exactly the same thing happened to me almost thirty years ago, in almost exactly the same spot. This little fella is cooling off on the floor of Indian Creek, Bufflalo Gap National Grassland. Last time, it was much bigger one, who was slithering through the prairie grass, about 100 yards away. <br />
<br />
That was also at sunset -- rattlesnake time! That's when the are out and about. Though I should have been wary, both times they took me completely by surprise.<br />
<br />
BTW, this one isn't as big as he probably looks to you -- a little bigger in girth than my index finger. I wouldn't want to be bitten by him just the same. Even if a rattler bite doesn't kill you, it will leave you gruesomely maimed and disfigured if you don't get antivenin soon. The nearest hospital to where I was at this moment is probably in Rapid City, about 40 miles away, and some of those miles on some really bad roads. <br />
<br />
So the best medicine in this case is not to get bit in the first place.Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-75140738214340071782012-07-07T10:27:00.001-05:002012-07-16T19:35:08.116-05:00'The Penaltax: A Problem Here?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7IZ7ag2cUpY/T_e_trjxKfI/AAAAAAAABs8/pNljvVF8I9s/s1600/6a00d83451eb3469e20176162eefd2970c-500wi.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7IZ7ag2cUpY/T_e_trjxKfI/AAAAAAAABs8/pNljvVF8I9s/s320/6a00d83451eb3469e20176162eefd2970c-500wi.png" width="320" /></a></div>
As I was driving through western South Dakota yesterday evening, <a href="http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2012/07/dnc-scientists-disprove-existence-of-roberts-taxon.html">this blog post </a>by Dave Birge set off such a mental fugue in my head that I forgot to look at my fuel gauge and almost ran out of gas.<br />
<br />
Here is what I haven't quite figured out. First, the facts: <br />
<br />
The Affordable Care Act at one time, so they say, had language that described the penalty for refusing the buy health insurance when the government says you can afford it as a "tax." That was taken out, many people think, because the bill could not have become law if this charge, cost, impost, whatever it is, is a tax. If it was, it wouldn't have gotten through Congress. It had to be a penalty, not a tax.<br />
<br />
Then, in the Supreme Court, it became a tax again. Why? If it were a penalty, it would not have gotten through the Supreme Court. This is certain. Unless Chief Justice's discussion of the Commerce Clause argument was a blatant lie, he was bound to side with the three other conservatives and Anthony "Swing Vote" Kennedy and strike down the individual mandate. <br />
<br />
So in order to get through Congress, it was a penalty, and in order to get through the SC, it was a tax. All the Republicans seem to have to say about this (not including Romney in this case) is something like "Aha! So you did raise taxes! So there!! Nyah nyah!" Am I the only one who sees a deeper problem here? Does anybody see any "checks and balances" issues here? Something about the rule of law? Anybody? Anybody? Hello?<br />
<br />
I haven't quite put my finger on it yet, but I think there's a problem here: A law means whatever it has to mean in order to get passed and stand.Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-83560389924819905632012-03-04T11:33:00.011-06:002012-03-04T19:47:57.182-06:00Top Five Reasons Not to Write a Nasty Obit<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SSAf_DRDp3A/T1PGEUG7YqI/AAAAAAAABs0/8t_JTFTXA3Y/s1600/mencken-painting.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 340px; height: 264px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SSAf_DRDp3A/T1PGEUG7YqI/AAAAAAAABs0/8t_JTFTXA3Y/s400/mencken-painting.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716130129482834594" /></a><div style="font-weight: normal; "><i>De mortuis nil nisi bonum.</i> The idea is so old its classic expression is in Latin: Speak no ill of the dead. After Andrew Breitbart's sudden death at the shockingly young age of 43 has provoked a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73512_Page3.html">chorus of nasty tweets</a> and blog posts from the left, a lot of folks are rethinking this ancient aphorism.</div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-weight: normal; ">I've never been quite sure what to think of the practice. H. L. Mencken, one of my heroes, wrote<a href="http://purple.niagara.edu/chambers/mencken.html"> an obit of William Jennings Bryan </a>that was so <span style="font-size: 100%; "> </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">brilliantly vicious that, according to legend, a colleague thought HLM didn't realize that Bryan was dead (I guess he missed the memorable first sentence of the piece). I could be accused of having committed a similar sort of offense<a href="http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2009/08/edward-kennedty-1932-2009.html"> when Ted Kennedy died</a> (though in my defense I was really objecting to the way the whole country was going way too far in the other direction - adulation for a "lion" who was obviously a seriously flawed person). (See also<a href="http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2009/08/according-to-this-author-some-news.html"> this</a>.)</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">For the moment I'm leaning slightly toward the<i> nihil nisi </i>crowd -- though not out of fondness for Breitbart, whom I came to regard, after the Sherrod affair, as a polluter of the civil forum. </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">1.<b> Respect for the family and friends of the deceased.</b> Someone might well be hurt by what you say. I found t<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/01/1069731/-I-ll-say-it-about-Breitbart" style="font-weight: normal; ">his writer's apologies</a> to AB's family for his harsh word-choice actually quite touching -- and probably appropriate.</div><div style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; ">2. </span><b>Don't kick them when they are down.</b> Until moments ago, you were carrying on a spirited argument with someone who made you angry. Suddenly they have been silenced and can't answer you. It feels unfair. Later, when you discuss them as someone who receding into history, that is a different dialogue, with a different tone. Take some time to calm down and switch gears. If all you are going to do is continue the screaming match in a one-sided fashion, maybe you should consider silence.</div><div style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; ">3. </span><b>You won.</b> Death after all is a sort of defeat, and you're still here. Maybe you should show some magnanimity.</div><div style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">4. <b>Concern for your own reputation.</b> By kicking a warm body you make yourself look petty and vindictive.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">5. <b>Respect for the awful mystery of death itself.</b> Death puts things into perspective, and here you are showing a complete lack thereof. Try growing up a little.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Of course, none of these considerations amounts to an absolute prohibition. Let your conscience, your taste, and your concern for the feelings of others be your guide.</span></div>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-88117062093841520162012-02-26T12:04:00.017-06:002012-02-26T18:13:21.174-06:00Police Surveillance Drones: Time to Draw a Line?<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n6PWeuG63uY/T0qFN1be9cI/AAAAAAAABso/F4mCziAxVCI/s1600/7a8c1a2ebef64f05080f6a7067007e12.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n6PWeuG63uY/T0qFN1be9cI/AAAAAAAABso/F4mCziAxVCI/s320/7a8c1a2ebef64f05080f6a7067007e12.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5713525550000043458" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; " >Like or not, domestic use of those surveillance drones that were developed by the military is coming. Many potential users are interested in them, in many cases for uses that are plainly legitimate, but <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/pressure-builds-civilian-drone-flights-home-150120049.html">according to this article</a> the "hungriest" these by far are "the nation's 19,000 law enforcement agencies." </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >Is this anything to worry about? Of course not, says big business and their friends in big government:</span></span></div><div><meta equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><blockquote>"Today anybody— the paparazzi, anybody — can hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that they're interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they want," said Elwell, the aerospace industry spokesman. "I don't understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing."</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >The idea is that the only relevant difference between a helicopter and a drone is expense, not privacy. This statement is plainly false, as you can see from the following quote from the same article:</span></div><div><meta equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><blockquote>Drones come in all sizes, from the high-flying Global Hawk with its 116-foot wingspan to a hummingbird-like drone that weighs less than an AA battery and can perch on a window ledge to record sound and video. Lockheed Martin has developed a fake maple leaf seed, or "whirly bird," equipped with imaging sensors, that weighs less than an ounce.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >Recording sound and video from the vantage of a residential window ledge is treated as criminal when done by a civilian. We are looking at something that potentially carries information-gathering capacity of the police way beyond what is supported by helicopters and planes.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >There are clearly forms of surveillance that are okay. Though some object to them, I don't mind fixed recording cameras at busy intersections and turnpike tollbooths. I am glad that they have helped in the apprehension of vicious criminals and have documented police brutality as well.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >Is there a principled line to draw here? </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></div><div><meta equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;" >As we ordinarily understand it, the right to privacy is very flexible: it is easy to give up. At the moment I am putting on my necktie tomorrow morning, I will have a right, good against everyone in the world, that the not see my tie. As soon as I open the front door and step out onto a public sidewalk, I have given up that right.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;" ><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;" >A legal phrase you often see here is "reasonable expectation of privacy." I don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a busy intersection, which is why both private citizens and government officials may observe and even photograph me there.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;" ><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;">If the system gives the cops the right to freely use these drones, as it has allowed them to </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><a href="http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/search?q=swat">freely use military-style armor and weapons</a> and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><a href="http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/search?q=taser">freely administer devastating electric shocks in the field</a>, then the area of your life with a reasonable expectation of privacy will shrink and, with it, your right to privacy may be greatly constricted.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; " ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;" >Unless people make an effort to stop it, this is most likely what will happen.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; " ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; " >In current law, the cops may search your home without a warrant if evidence of a crime is "in plain view," and "plain view" includes seeing it (for instance, a marijuana plant in your back yard) from an airplane or helicopter. Shall we extend that to include seeing it via one of those hummingbird drones buzzing around in your yard? If we do, there will be a lot more things they can do do you without convincing a judge that they have probable cause, and without getting your permission.</span></div>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-48483782990147701792012-02-12T01:46:00.000-06:002012-02-26T18:20:59.120-06:00The Contraception Mandate<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLoehRF37Yw/TzgsjEizIKI/AAAAAAAABsc/p1VewcQjF-8/s1600/obama2-articleLarge.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 186px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLoehRF37Yw/TzgsjEizIKI/AAAAAAAABsc/p1VewcQjF-8/s320/obama2-articleLarge.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5708361508718846114" border="0" /></a>So the president has put forth a "compromise" version of the H & H S decree that health insuranceproviders, including Catholic schools, hospitals, and charities to pay for all female contraceptives, (including sterilization surgery and what some people regard as abortion-inducing drugs).<br /><div><meta equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-size:15px;" ><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" >According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/health/policy/obama-to-offer-accommodation-on-birth-control-rule-officials-say.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1">the New York Times</a>, the compromise is an attempt to "make the new rule more like that offered by the State of Hawaii, where employees of religiously affiliated institutions obtained contraceptives through a side benefit offered by insurance companies." However, they explain somewhat helpfully: "The result differs from Hawaii in that it shifts the cost to insurers, instead of employees. It also differs from Hawaii in that it requires companies — and not the religious institutions — to inform employees about how to arrange coverage."</span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" >I'm having trouble understanding what this change amounts to. It sounds like religiously affiliated employers</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" >will no longer have to pay directly for employee's contraceptives: instead, they will only have to do so indirectly, through the insurance they will be forced to pay for. Under both arrangements, individuals (as opposed to institutions) are compelled to pay for other people's contraceptives via the insurance premiums they are forced to pay.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" >I'm also having a huge problem seeing how this is an improvement. It sounds like what the administration is thinking is that the original objection was that Catholic institutions are holy and can't get any birth control cooties on them. If the connection is sufficiently indirect, that's not too icky and so everyone can be fine with it.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;font-family:georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;font-size:15px;" ></span>The real issue is similar to the one involved in this paragraph from Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom (one of the three achievements he asked to be named on his epitaph):</div><div><meta equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><blockquote>That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind.</blockquote></span></span></div><div>Forcing someone to actively participate in an activity that they sincerely believe is wrong is morally problematic. So is forcing them to pay for advocacy of the idea that this activity is in fact not wrong (the case that Jefferson is addressing here). I would also put forcing someone to pay for carrying out this same activity belongs in the same category. </div>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-18251418649085339432012-01-12T15:51:00.009-06:002012-01-29T20:42:23.638-06:00The Mass Media: Polluters of the Human Soul?<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4R9BFIFEwx8/Tw9cX0o_1dI/AAAAAAAABsQ/oYx2ZHQeUVc/s1600/Mission.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 217px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4R9BFIFEwx8/Tw9cX0o_1dI/AAAAAAAABsQ/oYx2ZHQeUVc/s320/Mission.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696873617984312786" border="0" /></a>I've just re-read Ortega's <i>Mission of the University</i>. Interesting stuff, like everything he wrote, but the best part is the last page, which is a blistering attack on the press -- or what we today would call "the mainstream media." When his colleagues at El Sol, a paper for which he wrote, saw it, they wrote a collective editorial bashing him for it. What's most disturbing is how close to the truth it still is today -- probably much closer than it was in 1930, when he wrote it.<br /><br />Here we are in the midst of a primary election campaign, and there is a huge amount of reporting on who is going to win (though it's fairly obvious who will win), little reporting on the candidates' positions on the issues, and almost non on the issues themselves. That is exactly the sort of "inversion" Ortega talks about below.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, here is the passage. Scroll down to get my quickie translation:</div><br /><i>[H]oy no existe en la vida pública más “poder espiritual” que la Prensa. La vida pública, que es la verdaderamente histórica, necesita siempre ser regida, quiérase o no. Ella, por si, es anónima y ciega, sin dirección autónoma. Ahora bien: a estas fechas han desaparecido los antiguos “poderes espirituales”: la Iglesia, porque ha abandonado el presente, y la vida pública es siempre actualisima; el Estado, porque, triunfante la democracia, no dirige ya a ésta, sino al revés, es gobernado por la opinión pública. En tal situación, la vida pública se ha entregado a la única fuerza espiritual que por oficio se ocupa de la actualidad: la Prensa.<br /><br />Yo no quisiera molestar en dosis apreciable a los periodistas. Entre otros motivos, porque tal vez yo no sea otra cosa que un periodista. Pero es ilusorio cerrarse a la evidencia con que se presenta la jerarquía de las realidades espirituales. En ella ocupa el periodismo el rango inferior. Y acaece que la<br />conciencia pública no recibe hoy otra presión ni otro mando que los que le llegan de esa espiritualidad ínfima rezumada por las columnas del periódico. Tan ínfima es a menudo, que casi no llega a ser espiritualidad; que en cierto modo es antiespiritualidad. Por dejación de otros poderes, ha quedado encargado de alimentar y dirigir el alma pública el periodista, que es no sólo una de las clases menos cultas de la sociedad presente, sino que, por causas, espero, transitorias, admite en su gremio a pseudointelectuales chafados, llenos de resentimiento y de odio hacia el verdadero espíritu. Ya su profesión los lleva a entender por realidad del tiempo lo que momentáneamente mete ruido, sea lo<br />que sea, sin perspectiva ni arquitectura.<br /><br />La vida real es de cierto pura actualidad; pero la visión periodística deforma esta verdad reduciendo lo actual a lo instantáneo y lo instantáneo a lo resonante. De aquí que en la conciencia pública aparezca hoy el mundo bajo una imagen rigorosamente invertida. Cuanto más importancia sustantiva y perdurante tenga una cosa o persona, menos hablarán de ella los periódicos, y en cambio, destacarán en sus páginas lo que agota su esencia con ser un “suceso” y dar lugar a una noticia. Habrían de no obrar sobre los periódicos los intereses, muchas veces inconfesables, de sus empresas; habría de mantenerse el dinero castamente alejado de influir en la doctrina de los diarios, y bastaría a la Prensa abandonarse a su propia misión para pintar el mundo del revés. No poco del vuelco grotesco que hoy padecen las cosas -Europa camina desde hace tiempo con la cabeza para abajo y los pies pirueteando en lo alto- se debe a ese imperio indiviso de la Prensa, único “poder espiritual”. Es, pues, cuestión de vida o muerte para Europa rectificar tan ridícula situación. Para ello tiene la Universidad que intervenir en la actualidad como tal Universidad, tratando los grandes temas del día desde su punto de vista propio -cultural, profesional o científico.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div> <meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title></title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Linux)"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[T]oday, there is no “spiritual power” in public life, other than the press. Public life, which is the truly historical life, always needs to be governed, like it or not. It is, in itself, anonymous and blind, without autonomous direction. Well, then, in these days the old “spiritual powers” have disappeared: the Church, because it has abandoned the present, and public life is always superlatively current; the State, because, with democracy triumphant, the state does not direct it, but the reverse, as the state is governed by the opinions of the public. In such a situation, public life has handed itself over to the only spiritual power still functioning at present: the press.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have no great desire to abuse the journalists. Among other reasons, there is the possibility that I am no more than a journalist myself. But to close oneself off to the obvious fact that the spiritual powers present themselves as a hierarchy is to delude oneself. In this hierarchy, journalism occupies the lowest rank. And so it comes to pass that the public consciousness today receives no other pressure nor command than those that arrive from that debased spirituality that drips from the columns of newspapers.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So degraded is it that it often does not attain the level of spirituality at all, being in a certain manner a form of anti-spirituality. Due to the abdication of the other powers, the one left with the charge to nourish and direct the public spirit is the journalist, who is not only one of the least cultivated classes that society presents, but who, for reasons I hope are transitory, admits to his profession unkempt pseudo-intellectuals full of resentment and hatred for the true realm of the spirit. With no sense of perspective or architecture, they take for the reality of the times whatever makes a momentary noise.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Real life is characterized by a certain pure currentness. But journalistic vision deforms this truth, reducing the current to the instantaneous, and the instantaneous to the sensational. Hence the world appears to public consciousness by way of an image rigorously inverted. The more substantial and enduring importance a thing has, the less they speak of it in the press while, on the other hand, they highlight in their pages whatever will be a “success” and bring notoriety. Even if they were freed from motives that in many cases are unspeakable, even if money were to remain chastely aloof from infuencing the opinions of the dailies, they would nonetheless pursue their mission of depicting the world inside-out. No little of the grotesque inversion we see today – for some time now, Europe has been going along with its head below and its feet pirouetting above – is owing to the undivided power of the press, the sole “spiritual power.” It is a matter of life and death that Europe should rectify such an absurd situation. To that end, the university must intervene in current affairs. It must do so as the university, treating the great themes of the day from its proper points of view, cultural, professional, or scientific.</p></div>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-14723493336233974802012-01-01T15:06:00.004-06:002012-01-01T17:16:51.107-06:00Moral Thinking in the Real World<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-94OnyOCKkVI/TwDLscZlj2I/AAAAAAAABsE/RuV6Vm1dV-4/s1600/haidt1%2B%25281%2529.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 244px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-94OnyOCKkVI/TwDLscZlj2I/AAAAAAAABsE/RuV6Vm1dV-4/s320/haidt1%2B%25281%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5692773893394501474" /></a><a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/30/the-moral-foundations-of-occupy-wall-str">This</a> is a very interesting article on the OWS movement by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. <div><br /></div><div>I've been following his work at a distance for some years now. He and his colleagues analyse real-world moral thinking based on "six clusters of moral concerns": "care/harm [eg., compassion for the underdog], fairness/cheating [here, distributive justice has a place], liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation."</div><div><br /></div><div>Among their findings: liberals and libertarians think almost exclusively in terms of the first three clusters. Social conservatives use all six, extensively. We liberals and libertarians, by comparison, live in a morally truncated world. At a fundamental conceptual level, their moral world is much richer.</div><div><br /></div><div>The signs at Zucotti park, he finds, are extremely typical of the left-liberal Weltanschauung. </div><div><br /></div><div>The most interesting thing in this particular article is the Machiavellian advice he offers OWS at the end:</div><div><blockquote>[I]f the protesters continue to focus on the gross inequality of outcomes in America, they will get nowhere. There is no equality foundation. Fairness means proportionality, and if Americans generally think that the rich got rich by working harder or by providing goods and services that were valued in a free market, they won’t support redistributionist policies. But if the OWS protesters can better articulate their case that “the 1 percent” got its riches by cheating, rather than by providing something valuable, or that “the 1 percent” abuses its power and oppresses “the 99 percent,” then Occupy Wall Street will find itself standing on a very secure pair of moral foundations. </blockquote> When I read this I realized that, by George, equality is not to be found in his six "clusters." What you see is fairness, which (pace Rawls) is not the same thing. Haidt thinks of fairness as a matter of proportionality, not equality. Equality means treating everyone the same. Proportionality means treating people in appropriately different ways.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then another realization hit me: if he is right, academic political philosophy is even more out of touch with the way normal people think than I had thought it was. Whether you look at Arneson or Cohen or Dworkin - or the vast horde of Rawlsians - it is pretty much wall-to-wall egalitarian. Their big issue is: which kind of eqalitarianism is the right one? The one thing they assume is the fundamental moral foundation for political thinking is something that most Americans, and possibly most human beings, don't really care about at all. </div><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title></title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Linux)"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style>Lester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.com5