I have just read of a new report that claims the "richest 2% of adults own half the wealth" of the world ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm ). I had already been aware of the fact that, while the Dow hits new highs daily and we all rejoice (even though the vast majority of us have no stake in any of the stocks), our poverty rates have coincedentally reached historic highs. I am not a communist, and my knowledge of Marx is to the extent where I only can agree to the most general principles. One concept, however, where I think Marx (or maybe more accurately, Engels) hit the nail on the head is the idea of false consciousness. I see this phenomenon occuring in two separate strains: one for liberals, and a more virulent one in conservatives.

Let me begin by directly quoting a simple explanation of what false consciousness is: It is the misleading or erroneous understanding of how capitalism comes to benefit the proletariat. (search "false consciousness" in Wikipedia for more.)

Now let's examine how false consciousness is manifest in American thought:

The most obvious and deplorable -the "vanguard" of false consciousness, if such a term might be used- is in Libertarian ideology. The simple idea is that because free competition, or "pure" capitalism, is the most efficient method towards producing capital, and seeing as capital is desirable by everyone, we should aspire to institutions as close to pure capitalism as we can. I certainly don't deny that capitalism is the best method to procure the most (sum) wealth, but I strongly deny that the greatest sum amount of wealth is in it of itself desirable. 

Strictly hypothetically, if a method was able to produce the greatest amount of wealth on the condition that 90% of the wealth was dispersed amongst only 5% of the population, would it be the most desirable method? From behind John Rawls' veil of ignorance (that term can also surprisingly be found on Wikipedia), I think it is safe to conclude that we would not agree on such terms. Of course, there is a very elementary capitalist response to such a claim: that capitalism does not necessarily spread wealth so unevenly. Far be it from me to commit myself to a pro causa non causa (also on Wikipedia) statement by saying that, because America is capitalist and our gap between rich and poor is strikingly similar to that hypothetically outlined, capitalism must necessarily create such gaps. No, I will stop short of making that claim just yet, but the correlation (obviously not necessarily the causation) of wealth disparity and capitalism is striking. It remains to be demonstrated that capitalism inherently leads to such disparity, and I am as far from an economist as can be imagined, but I do have some points to offer on the argument from a philosophical standpoint.

Why is it that capitalism might necessarily lead to income disparity that adversely effects the majority of the population? Well, if the grandfather of Capitalist philosophy, Adam Smith, was correct that humans are inherently self-interested the problem seems to present itself. If beneficience is virtuous (and I would absolutely love to have someone challenge that assertion), and humans will not if left to their own devices act beneficiently, but rather act only in self-interest, then pure capitalism makes no appropriations for beneficience. What is the impetus, within the pure capitalist paradigm, for the act of beneficience? If there is no incentive to give to those in need, within capitalism it follows analytically that you will not give to those in need. What incentive could capitalism offer? Maybe that your givings to charity will increase your social standing and people will buy more of your products. Maybe that you pay your employees more so that they can afford your products (a la Henry Ford). Basically, any conceivable reason you might find for it to be strictly in your self-interest to give to those in need is an incentive capitalism would purport to offer. But how many of these incentives actually exist? Furthermore, is it enough to care only that others have enough money to benefit you? Because you don't inherently care for others' well-being it would also follow that, if through not caring for others' well-being, but actually hoping against their well-being you were more greatly benefitted, you would desire that outcome. In other words, if it would benefit you more to use slave labor than to give to charity, by Adam Smith's model you would be committed to slave labor. The libertarian argues, on this point, that humans are opposed to slave labor and wouldn't buy your products, so it wouldn't be in your interest in the first place: but I would point to Nike and the Gap and disagree. If humans are interested in themselves, and it benefits them to buy cheaper products (via child labor), where does this absence of a market for such ill-produced goods spring from? It doesn't, and if it did, it would require something apart from Adam Smith's idea of self-interest to justify its existence. That something is either government regulations, and/or (Marx's idea) that we shouldn't make claims about human nature in the first place. If we want to avoid all of the ills that accompany pure self-interest (disregard for the environment, indifference to others' suffering that could be alleviated through personal sacrafice) we are committed to something apart from strict self-interest in the first place.

I have to leave this thought (and the many, many others I have on the topic) quite abridged for now because of finals, but there will be more. As I see it, unless complete individual freedom, no matter what consequences that freedom may bring, is a virtue which trumps all others, Libertarianism is at best misguided and oblivious to history. The faith in the self-interested invisible hand to procure a best overall world for everyone is, to my mind, one small step below scientology in terms of plausibility.

Posted by bigloeb at 3:43 PM CST

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink

Democrats have taken both houses of congress, essentially ousting Rumsfeld, our military presence in Iraq has now outlasted our involvement in WWII (it long ago outlasted our involvement in the first World War), the new Pentagon report says we can either "go big, go long, or go home", Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says that the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is key to any hope in stabilizing the area, and top U.S. generals are saying the next six months will determine our ultimate fate in Iraq (though I believe I've heard that line in several six month intervals over the last 3 years). In short, it seems as if an actual change in Iraq policy could be in the relatively near future.

But if you're looking for any of my opinions on the subject, I'm afraid you're out of luck: I'd much rather write about something my TA said.

It began with an impromptu tongue thrashing on the value of gender neutrality when writing an essay, but it soon escalated into absurdity. For my part, I did not care to point out that critical essays on Aristotle's arguments -when Aristotle's arguments use only the masculine pronoun- are not gender biased in that they are only being consistent with the argument's pronoun. Aristotle certainly was gender biased, but another's criticism of his examples quoting his language certainly is not. But I did not make this point, as it would have interrupted my strict daily regiment of counting the individual minutes until the particular class ends.

Moments later, however, I nearly abandoned my sacred ritual in outrage.

After reminding us of how we will lose points on our final papers if we don't use gender neutral pronouns, my TA informed us that it is still acceptable to use only the feminine pronoun. And why is "she" and "her" still considered gender neutral? Of course, because "he" and "his" have already been overused.

Sadly, this is not an unfair representation of my TA's reasoning: it is just so blatantly ludicrous that it seems so.

Here is the simple problem: compensation is not equivilant to neutral. It thus cannot simply replace neutral and remain valid. In fact, I would say that in the most critical sense compensation requires an absence of neutrality.

What I mean is this: if neutrality (of gender) means that gender is not a deciding factor towards a particular decision (i.e. a particular example or anecdote will work just as -or more- effectively with "he/she" or "it" in place of a singular gender pronoun), then to compensate for past decisions in which gender shouldn't have mattered by using gender again where it shouldn't be used is to defeat the very claim that gender neutrality is the desired objective.

To understand why such compensation is inherently at odds with the most basic intuitive understanding of neutral, consider this hypothetical situation: Let's say that someone kept a tabulation of all the times in history "he" has been inappropriately used in place of a gender neutral pronoun, and all the times "she" has been used likewise. According to the records, it shows that in fact "he" has been used 2 billion times whereas "she" has only been used 1 billion times. Would we achieve gender neutrality by then on using "she" a billion times? No, we have only moved from one unnecessary bias to another. But to understand why it is harmful to consider compensation as akin to neutral, consider the following less trivial example:

Imagine a corporation hires 50 new employees to estimable positions. Each of these new employees are men, and they are picked solely because of the CEO's bias towards men. It is plainly an unfair selection. Now let's imagine that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission got wind of this practise and threatened sanctions and litigation unless the situation was corrected. What would the correcting of the situation entail? Would it be best if the CEO fired 25 employees and replaced them with women, or would it be best if ALL of employees were fired and selected the new 50 based purely on their merits, while disregarding their gender? If gender neutrality is the aim, than clearly the correct choice is the latter, for even if this process yields either more female or more male employees, gender played no role in their hiring. If gender neutrality worked as acids and bases do, perhaps then it would be best to ensure a 50-50 ratio; but as it stands, such compensation is a far cry away from actual neutrality.

My point throughout all of this is not to take away from the multitude of gender issues which do exist today that treat women unfairly. My point is that, rather then right a wrong, some people think it appropriate to just create new, reversed wrongs. When I hear (and I've both heard and read such sentiments in news publications) that someone intends to vote for a candidate because they are a woman, I am a bit disheartened. Voting for someone solely because they are a woman can only be a justifiable criterion if there is some inherent, non-trivial trait within all women that all men lack. Some have argued for such inherent differences (most notably, Carol Gilligan), but I remain skeptical. I for one doubt that, whatever propensities women or men might be born with, such propensities cannot just as easily be overwhelmed by the incredible social factors of life; whether, in other words, there are not enough life shaping events in life to dilute the power of an extra chromosome.

So when my female friends say they believe America needs a female president because females are more compassionate, I point to Margaret Thatcher. When bigots say that we need a male president because women aren't smart enough, I point to George W. Bush. And when I am pressed for my own preference on a candidate, I point to anything I feel illustrates the person's character and policies: but you can be assured that nothing of the sort is to be found in a box shaded either M or F.

Posted by bigloeb at 3:58 PM CST

Updated: Tuesday, 28 November 2006 5:04 PM CST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

I've been really busy over the last few weeks writing essays for classes, so I haven't really had the time or desire to write anything else. Unfortunately, that trend probably won't change for another couple of weeks. I was thinking of posting a paper I just got back from my ethical theory class, but I had second thoughts because of both its length and overly technical dimension. Instead, I've decided to post some very preliminary ideas I've had for my next ethics paper. If anyone gets the urge (though I doubt anyone will), please feel free to post any comment/criticisms you have on my ideas.

Alright, here's the topic (omitting the philosopher whose ideas and articles I am supposed to draw from): Is there room for mercy as an autonomous virtue when it comes to criminal justice?

To put the question in less philosophical jargon: Can one act merciful in a criminal court of law and still act justly?

My simple answer is no -not in criminal law anyways. If justice is the act of giving the most appropriate sentence (granted that judges have the ability and leeway to interpret what that sentence should be) than, if being merciful is the correct action, it would necessarily mean that a lessened sentence was the correct action. But in such a case, it would not thus be mercy shown by the judge, but rather the fulfillment of justice. If it is right to give a lesser sentence (ostensibly for mercy's sake) than justice demanded that you give the lesser sentence: mercy played no role. Many might simply argue that my definition of mercy seems circular in context: that to me mercy simply is justice in certain scenarios. But that is not the case.

Mercy is the act of relieving someone from a debt or punishment that they otherwise deserve - and relieving it presumably out of compassion for the person. Now, if as the judge, you show mercy on a particular criminal you either do so for a reason (e.g. extenuating circumstances) or you do so trivially. But if it is for a reason, than it seems to follow that the reason would have made punishment unjust: if the reason is relevant enough to warrant mercry, surely it is relevant enough to influence the severity of the sentencing without deference to mercy, but to justice.  If this is the case, the only instance in which showing mercy would be showing mercy -and not simply acting justly- would be if you showed mercy arbitrarily. But is that a virtuous thing to do? While some might argue so (and their reasons for doing so, I believe, concern thier ideas more so on the negativity of punishment in general -which is a seperate debate), I would say that arbitrary mercy is not only non-virtuous, but in fact a dereliction of duty in the case of judges in criminal courts. As a judge, you don't have the right, but the obligation to assign penalties as would best serve the interest of society and law (or society through law). For an arbitrarily merciful sentence to be in the best interest of society or law, it must follow that the full, otherwise mandated, sentence is not as beneficial for society. But if this is the case than the merciful sentencing (though intentfully arbitrary) is in fact the true justice: and this cannot be the case if mercy is apart (or an autonomous virtue) from justice. Furthermore, if the judge is to act mercifully through capriciousness rather than reason, what is to prevent him from sentencing a rapist to a lenient punishment on friday, and an identical criminal to a harsh punishment on monday? Unless there is relevant reason behind his mercy, there is nothing: but if there is relevant reason behind his mercy that reason must lead to justice.

This is only a very tenative outline of how I intend to approach the topic, and there are many holes and incongruencies. I think that one might say that mercy is a "supererogatory" virtue; but I think this attempt still runs into problems concerning why, exactly, it is so incredibly virtuous to show mercy in the first place. If it is, than it seems that criminal justice is, if not unjust, than at least far less just (e.g. not supererogatory) than mercy. The most difficult task for me to understand is how mercy can be a virtue apart from justice without contradicting the virtue of justice: in such cases there seems to be great friction in the Aristotelian "unity of virtue". At the same time, however, I can't help but feel that I lead myself into a false dichotomy: that perhaps maybe some things aren't either just or unjust, but apart from both. I just have trouble conceptualizing how it is mercy could be that way; especially in the case of criminal law.

Well, "just some thoughts for the mind" as a wise man (Nas) once said.

Posted by bigloeb at 11:36 AM CST

Updated: Tuesday, 21 November 2006 12:44 PM CST

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say thank god the elections are almost over. It is during these few weeks directly preceeding the ballot box that the toxicity of the political landscape becomes so overpowering that you wonder if you wouldn't simply be better off without it all -if you could just join the ranks of people who claim "politics don't affect them." Unfortunately, politics equals policy, and policy tends to reach over vast expanses; so this is a difficult claim to justify.

(If you haven't grown depressed by the political atmosphere of the day, feel free to completely ignore the following paragraph as it is more or less a tangent concerning why I am growing disinterested in public policy and social problems in general.)

Trotsky once wrote "anyone desiring a quiet life has done badly to be born in the twentieth century": it is as my own political ire is piqued that I most brashly give way to lamentations of the sort; yielding finally to a misguided nostalgia for an era I never actually experienced. I am of the belief that we have but one life to live; and that even that is ultimately no more than a final, culminating memory from which we either sigh in relief or gasp in anxiety. When one's life becomes inextricably bound to forces truly beyond one's capacity or truly reliant on outside forces, one's only recourse is to gasp in the wretched hope that those forces will vindicate them. Investing too much of one's happiness in the outcome of the political arena is a practise of the sort: rather than value and train what is yours, you value and rely upon what is given to you, and can just as easily be taken away.

I have decided that roughly once a month I will post something called "Loeb's Politics" which is pretty self-explanatory: it will focus on what I believe in and what I would advocate if I had the power and the ability to disregard all obstacles that might impede my policy (public opinion being a very large one). This first issue in unconcerned with policy, however, and instead is a rough outline of my greater philosophy concerning my political orientation. As I am not sure what label to give myself, I suppose it could be called my "Progressive Manifesto". Enjoy.

            What is it that a society aspires to? In a word, the most frequent responses involve some idea of either liberty or equality. Another less frequently stated -but more ubiquitously implied- word is stability. The question itself might seem to serve little use, but the progressive’s mere existence wholly relies upon it. An aspiration is the only universal feature of the progressive; the justification of that aspiration the determinant of the progressive’s value. Yet complete liberty and complete equality, if attained at the hands of the progressives, would at their very moment of attainment render the progressive a relic of the past. For the progressive to persist, he must be the uber-progressive: his aspiration must be the continuation of progress itself. The aspiration towards stability, in that sense, is confined: stability as a component of good things is desirable, but desiring that quality for itself is ludicrous. It is the movement forward that inspires the progressive; and the knowledge that the movement is infinite which consoles him.

            The most common criticisms concerning progressive ideals are centered on their idealism. Certain aspirations are, it is argued, pseudo-ideals which have no prospect of converging with reality; these are seen as unnatural attempts at “social engineering”. Even worse, when they are attempted they lead to unforeseen negative consequences much worse than whatever the original situation allowed. This is no less than the paradigmatic conservative argument against progression. I have said this in the past and I will say it now: such an argument can and has been used in every epoch of history with equal force: its obvious absurdity is apparent only when it is disregarded. The 19^th century conservative warned against the perils of women’s rights; the 18^th century’s against doubting the divine right of kings. Perhaps the prehistoric conservative made a similar impassioned speech about why cave life was preferable to agriculture: our movement in a positive direction has always come at the insistence of those who can imagine better. It is interesting to bear in mind that what we are told to conserve is typically, to the generation before us, what we were told to fear.

            A friend once told me (I suspect his views have since changed) that “what we have is fucked up, but the best possible.” It is in not quite the same terms that the conservative argument is made, but it is in the above terms that the actual argument is best understood, for it is in such terms that the illogical nature of the argument is more readily apparent. Likely no one would say that our society is perfect; that there are absolutely no problems to be fixed. Anyone who did make this claim would be necessarily required to be entirely content, or at least admit any discontent to be irrational. And yet, while problems exist, to the conservative argument our world is still perfect, in that it cannot be improved. The logical outcome of this claim is that perfection is flawed: a contradiction of terms. The conservative is forced to backtrack from this statement. Problems exist, what we have is not perfect he contends, and he is not arguing for stagnation, but for maintenance: problems will arise within the machine, but from this one need not throw out the machine, but fix the problems. This concession does little to disentangle the conservative from advocating absurdities. For now the conservative admits that the system has problems, but just as before believes with no good reason that the system is still superior to any other. And yet, while the conservative now may advocate reformations within the system, in the face of systemic problems he is impotent.

            Progression is, as John Dewey wrote, an inherently positive force. In that regard, the desire should not be a final state -as that state would deny progression- but in a permanent progression. And yet, progression can only be towards something: the “blind progression” we are warned against is impossible. Without a goal it is only movement, never progression, as without a goal we progress towards nothing. The conundrum then is twofold: what is our goal, and how might we desire a goal which we do not mean to actually attain? For present purposes I intend only to answer how one could desire such a goal; what that goal is will require much more elaboration in subsequent posts.

            Does one have to believe in a utopia’s potential attainment to be inspired by the utopia? No, one does not, and given the etymology of the word one would be foolish to have that belief. Still, working towards perfection, -accepting that there will always be problems, and thus that things can always be better: such is the essence of inspiration. Given that the human attainment of perfection is impossible, and that happiness can not possibly therefore be a perfect state (if happiness is to exist at all), then it is only from within the act of improvement that one feels better. It is not from dwelling in the improved state that one feels happiness most acutely, but from the act of improving itself. It is now easy to understand why one should consider it a blessing that things might always be improved.

            In a world where a child dies every five seconds from malnutrition and yet obesity is poised to overtake smoking as the number one cause of preventable death in America; in a world where the 200 richest individuals control more wealth than the bottom 3 billion combined; in a world where as much money is devoted to the construction of one aircraft carrier as it is to 10 years worth of human development aid by all of the world’s industrialized nations; in a world like this we ought to think long and hard about exactly what it is we would want to conserve.

Posted by bigloeb at 9:00 PM CST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Let me get one quick thing out of the way: the answer is not because the Democrats could take both houses of congress. Actually, let me get one more thing out of the way: I use the word should in place of the word could very intentionally. Its not just that Iraq could be a wake-up call, but that Iraq should be a wake up call. What we need to wake up from is the intent of this article

The greater, though far less immediately imposing, problem with Iraq is not how to resolve it, but why it happenned in the first place. On this point I do not mean "why did we go into Iraq", but rather "why do these enormous problems persist?" The answer I propose, as simply as possible, is this: a war against an idea which focuses only on the holders of the idea, and not the cause of the idea itself, is a war destined for failure. We are targeting the affected, rather than the affecter; in so doing we may even be strengthening the latter. We have been told in the past that the insurgency was "in its last throes"; that was proven wrong. At one point it was estimated that the insurgency had roughly 10,000 fighters in Iraq; months and years later that estimate actually increased, despite the fact that American soldiers had been annihilating them on a daily basis. Unless we give the idea of zombie-power credit, the answer seems simple: people who were not originally devoted to the cause have now become so. The only chance for victory without indefinite engagement is to effectively destroy the cause. The question is, are we doing that?

The answer is no, and those who argue that we are betray their own ignorance of the cause they claim to combat.

Today's Minnesota Daily editorial section showcased opposite extremes of the Iraq withdrawal spectrum. Jason Stahl made the argument that "staying the course" (which even the Bushies refuse to officially endorse anymore) obviously has not and will not work, while increasing troop levels to a degree which actually will change the situation is implausible because of (to name just one) recruitment problems. On the other end, Darren Bernard agrees that "staying the course" won't work (funny how different that seems from past opinions) but argues that we should increase the troop level to 400,000 to 500,000 (we are currently at a little over 100,000), impose martial law, lock down the borders, etc. etc. In other words, no more Mr. Nice occupying force. That this view is essentially negated by Stahl's argument concerning the impossibility of such an increase is not what interests me (you can read the articles yourself at www.mndaily.com/sections/opinion for your own stance on which argument is convincing). What caught my eye was a particular phrase: "Anyone who believes a pullout is a solution... has a serious misunderstanding of the magnitude of the cause" (emphasis added). The cause is of course, either the spread of democracy, the end of terrorism, the search for weapons of mass destruction, or the vengeance of 9/11; since the last two (the original two for getting us in the war) have been forgotten, I'll assume Bernard meant the first two.

It is now en vogue to play the humanitarian card in the Iraq situation (Bernard indeed likens leaving Iraq to the worst humanitarian crisis of the last couple decades, i.e. Rwanda) but this is in fact no more than political bullshit. Numerous polls have Iraqi's prefering the way of life under Saddam (especially pre-U.S. sanctions) to the situation we have created. A John Hopkins study found that since the invasion Iraqi's are 58 times more likely to be killed (this was an early study which has since been disputed for being lower than reality). The invasion also spawned the largest increase in child mortality rate in the world, the U.N. found, with over 10% of children dying before they reach the age of five. Numbers are sometimes difficult to visualize, but the latter struck me as atrocious. Making a war of this nature into a humanitarian argument is an interesting endeavor; interesting in this case being a euphemism for fucking insane.

The real cause -and our greater geo-political objective- is obviously democracy. Good god, I have spent enough time in the past explaining why democracy will not necessarily, nor even likely help U.S. interests or global harmony: at this point I feel I can say the words Palestine and Iran and have sufficiently proven myself. What is even more telling is the argument implicitly vouched for that democracy will also inherently combat terrorism, thus making Bernard's cause for Iraq a tremendous one. But again, look at who Palestine democratically elected. Look at who gets the majority of votes in Iraq: candidates who secure alliance with militias like Moqtada Al Sadr's. Democracy is not a fucking panacea. Thus, to devote billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives to it could very well be over-exaggerating "the magnitude of the cause".

Wars against ideas which require a state have been fought successfully in the past: the fall of both fascism and Nazism are testaments to that. Wars against ideas caused by civil unrest and wealth disparities have not had such a great track record (Vietnam/communism, Iraq/terrorism) because our war only serves to intensify the unrest itself. Until we recognize exactly what it is we are fighting, our closest historical counterparts are either Sisyphus or Pyrrhus. No amount of troop reduction or troop increase will stop the problem so long as the problem goes neglected. If we want a real discourse on Iraq, a better understanding of terrorism might be a good first step.

Posted by bigloeb at 11:35 AM CST

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink

I've written in the past about how the Republican party is in the midst of a serious identity crisis (March 7th's issue, The Death of American Ideology) primarily concerning fiscal responsibility and limited government. Well, consider one more perennial Republican trait that can be struck from the list: accountability.

Accountability was already one of the political terms I considered perilously close to being devoid of actual meaning. Like being for freedom (but opposed to mandatory warrants for wiretaps), and being against wasteful spending (but spending more than any goverment since LBJ, even if we don't account for the increase in homeland security), believing in accountability apparently does not commit one to believing that they should be held accountable for previous mistakes. At least, that seems to be the Republican party's stance.

But you have to understand where the administration is coming from: hindsight is always 20-20. There is no reason to dwell on past mistakes when there are dire present problems to combat. Spending too much time on events that have already happenned can carry an even greater latent evil than the mistake itself: it can divert precious time and focus from future and current problems which could still potentially be solved. This, anyway, is the argument of the Republican party.

To anyone who thinks I am drawing an unfair characterization of the Republican party's stance, I urge you to reserve judgement until you check out http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/18/norah-odonnell-sells-the-gop-line-is-she-kidding-me/ 

First of all, and from a philosophical perspective, I don't feel the Republican argument to be necessarily wrong. But it doesn't take someone well versed in the concept of reductio ad absurdum to see the logical consequences such an argument justifies.

The line of argument is more or less as follows:

1) Republican's (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not) made mistakes in the past. This premise is accepted.

2) Those mistakes have led to problems which exist now and must be solved.

3) It is impossible to solve problems which have already occured: the closest equivilance is to subpoena or reprimand those who committed the mistake.

4) Very importantly, subpoenas and reprimands do absolutely nothing to right the previous wrong: they in no way alleviate the consequences of the mistake, nor do they necessarily make future mistakes less likely to occur. In fact, they (in this case) make future and present mistakes -if not more likely- at least compounded. This is because...

5) Subpoenas require a great deal of time and create political gridlock which hinders other policy procedures that could otherwise be directed towards useful tactics to correct or dissuade present and future (and thus avoidable) problems.

Conclusion: the democrats and their mission to demonize past problems will only make problems worse.

Real Conclusion: don't vote democrat.

This is an interesting line of argument, rooted exhaustively (though entirely implicitly) in a concept of utilitarian ethics. It would be wrong to focus on past wrongs because, in so doing, one is not actually augmenting the collective good; and we should clearly be more concerned with a greater present good then an arbitrarily "righted" past event. A more Kantian view (which is ironically the exact, though again wholly implicit, stance Republicans take on contentious issues ranging from abortion to stem cell research to the death penalty) would disagree on the grounds that bad events deserve punishment (more or less) regardless of the consequences of the punishment. To put it in Republican terms, there is less "moral relativism": You did something wrong and you will be punished; not, you did something wrong but, since the punishment doesn't really change what you already did and you are of more use out of jail than in it, we won't punish you this time.

If you feel I haven't already touched upon the problems of the Republican argument, I will do so now with what I call the "Raskolnikov argument" from Dostoevsky. (If you despise the highly technical and longwinded theoretical approach to these problems, I will include a predominantly pragmatic critique free from the abstruse taint of philosophy at the end of this article.)

Very crudely put, the Raskolnikov argument is this: one is allowed to commit atrocities if one is still, in spite of those crimes, demonstrably more valuable to the society should he be absolved of punishment. The parallels to the current political question should be obvious. This argument runs afoul in many, many ways, but no greater than in terms of its practical implementation. Could not everyone rationalize or believe that they are more valuable to society than they actually are, and thus justify their crimes? Raskolnikov does exactly this and so believes that should he, a propos of nothing, murder a worthless old women he should have no reason to feel either remorse or face punishment. The Bush adminsitration advocates a very similar belief when they feel that past wrongs need not be punished so long as those who commit the wrong are vital to a greater good (the neoconservative plan for the middle east). Basically so long as they believe they are working to a greater good, all sorts of lesser evils (torture, false pretenses, civilian casualites) are disregarded.

But let's take a final look at the more pragmatic aspect of the issue. For one, it could very easily be argued that the subpoenas do serve a future good in that they both discourage future behavior and give a greater insight into the problems of the past so that we are not "doomed to repeat" them (there is a philosophical equivalent to this argument involving the "threshold effect" and rule utilitarianism, but I promised not to get into that). One second argument to be make involving subpoenas would be that they could lead to direct helpful present effects (perhaps the removal of agents which both create and created mistakes, like Rumsfeld) and so are necessary to include in the arsenal directed towards solving current problems, rather than being relegated to the use of only past reprimand. A final argument which may very well reflect a personal bias, is that Republican leadership isn't even actually concerned that subpoenas will keep policy from happenning, but just wants to keep subpoenas off the table to avoid further costly incrimination. Why would I make such a charge? Consider this little piece of information: "The Republican House issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to the Clinton administration from 1997-2000 took 140 hours of testimony on whether or not Bill Clinton had abused his CHRISTMAS CARD LIST for fundraising: on the issue of Abu Ghraib they spent 12 hours and issued exactly one subpoena." (from the Star Tribune)

The fact of the matter is the Republican definition of accountability means nothing, and will continue to mean nothing until Bush's admissions of error go beyond simply lamenting that he shouldn't have said "bring it on". I think resignation might be a step in the right direction, if "accountability" holds any likeness to being accountable anyway.

Posted by bigloeb at 2:46 PM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

I've had a lot of different questions on my mind lately, but only very few answers. Even worse, the few questions I have felt like I've had an answer to have already been more eloquently answered by other people. Two examples include "Predator-Gate" (and yes, I am ashamed to have even thought about that topic in the first place) and the recent rash of school shootings. A more lucid explanation of the true issues at hand with Rep. Foley are given by Jason Stahl than I could hope to. His article can be found here: http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/10/09/69308 The obvious problems of the proposed new legislation to arm public school teachers is done sufficiently by Stephen Colbert (pay attention to his use of the word "irrational") and can be found here: http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/the-colbert-reportstephen-colbert/

So now I am left only with questions, and even they are predominantly not of political orientation.

Take, for instance, this anecdote:

Two years ago when I was preparing to vote in the presidential election I was caught in a dilemma. Living in Duluth at the time and with no car of my own, I had absolutely no way of making it to the polling station several miles from my townhome. All of my friends (with cars) were at class and probably wouldn't have been sufficiently motivated by my political proclivities to oblige my request for a ride anyways. However, my extremely conservative roommate (with both a car and absolutely nothing to do that day) was in the vicinity. We had grappled over politics before, and it was well known that we were both voting for opposing parties. Nevertheless, being a patriotic republican, my roommates zeal for democracy overwhelmed his distaste for John Kerry: without me even asking, he graciously offered to drive me to the polling station.

Short story shorter, the saga ended with me voting only through the will of another -who's vote was more or less negated by my own. This could be seen as a teary-eyed sign of hope, of democracy at work, etc. etc. as we both went home to eat apple pie and watch baseball. But I don't really care too much for that interpretation. No, the only reason I even remember the event is because I know that if I was in his position I wouldn't have acted as he did. And, quite frankly, I'm not the least bit ashamed that I wouldn't.

Here's the real question: If you hold a belief, is it right to -in the name of fairness- act so that another might forward their contrary belief? In slightly more ethically defined terms: if you rationally arrive at a belief (rationality in the decision making is important, in that given all information you are privvy to you logically arrive at the best possible conclusion)  is it right to give someone the power to deflate your belief's actualization (in this case the election of a democrat), if you have firm reason to believe that the person you are empowering has reached their contrary belief through faulty or specious reasoning (in this case by my roommate's justification of Bush's re-election because "since he decided to go into Iraq, there hasn't been another 9/11")?

I contend that is in fact wrong to help another act detrimentally to your goals (given the important qualifier that your goals are reasonably thought through and their's aren't. I'm not going to go into great detail about what I feel makes certain thought processes and arguments reasonable and others not reasonable, but I do believe that most people can come up with a general consensus of what the word "logical" entails without a meta-physical or epistemological prior argument. If anyone cares to make such an argument, I am more than willing to do so in rebuttal).  In fact, I believe there is an implicit value statement involved with any act (driving one to vote) which would otherwise contradict your desired outcome (whomever you desire elected). Such a value statement is in fact necessary for one to not act in self contradiction. My roommate, I would argue,  values voter turnout more than his particular candidate. Perhaps there is something admirable to this belief, but to me it is admirable only in the same manner that a man dying for his flag is admirable: long on panache, short on pragmatism.

Why don't I value voter turn out (or democracy) as much as I do the beliefs I ironically use democracy as a tool towards? Consider this hypothetical: Would a democracy in which a majority prefferred slavery be preferable to a dictorship in which the practise was outlawed? This is, of course, hyperbole when used in pertinence to the differences between an elected democrat and elected republican, but it is meant only to show a hierarchy in value. Democracy is by no means a transcendant or even superlative good. I would sacrafice democracy for a wealth of other goods I feel to be superior. But while I would not sacrafice democracy solely for the election of John Kerry, I would be willing to at the very least partially compromise democracy for what I feel to be greater goods (i.e. universal health care, environmental awareness, a more equitable tax system, etc.). To those at the other end of the political spectrum, consider the opposite scenario: would you drive socialists to the voting booth knowing that their votes will end free-market capitalism and, indeed, the American Way of life? Do you value democracy so much? I doubt it.

I would take the argument even further and say that democracy has no inherent value, only some potential value in certain decision making; but for present purposes I don't have to establish that premise for my argument to follow. To be sure, even things which might have inherent value need not go unbounded for their values to be realized. Consider Libertarianism's belief in the immense value of independence (Warning: I despise libertarianism above nearly all other political/philosophical platforms. Any bias that crept into my prior and ensuing definition of Libertarianism is subconscious and unintentional). I believe that freedom is a fundamental good, but not one which necessarily or even likely procures the greatest good. Thus I am for environmental regulations that a completely "free market" would not force, or would not be "guided to by the invisible hand of the market" until it became economically reasonable to. Of course, I would be told that capitalism is "self-regulating" and so the problems of unbounded freedom would naturally work themselves out (the laughable environmental example being that we need not protect, for instance, the amount of salmon that are caught each year because, when there are too few, they will be too expensive to be bought vis-a-vis supply and demand and therefore it will be in the fisheries economic interest to stop fishing for a while and replenish the population). I have not found a historical ounce of empirical validity to such claims, and there are furthermore such concepts as irreperable damage (think unregulated emmisions) which seem to derail the idea of a responsible completely free market.

But the original question remains: would it be wrong of me not to drive my roommate to the voting booth, though he would extend the courtesy? Have I merely rationalized my own selfish interests? I think not, and have many arguments I would make in my defence, but I'm more interested with what others think on the topic. 

Posted by bigloeb at 1:40 PM CDT

Updated: Thursday, 12 October 2006 3:24 PM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (11) | Permalink

I would like to begin this post with a few random updates.

First of all, my last week's post was published by The Minnesota Daily, with only a few omissions and edits. I wish they would have kept it verbatim because, as I feared, their editing actually misrepresented some minor points of mine and were, in fact, falsities I would not endorse (I wrote that the downside of anecdotal evidence is that it is nearly inevitably contradicted, but the wisdom behind the editorial board construed my phrasing to mean that anecdotal evidence is "nearly inevitably a contradiction". Anecdotal evidence is not "nearly inevitably a contradiction" and it kind of pisses me off that they would attribute that phrase to me). But, all things considered, my article was not butchered to the point where my overall message was unclear.

Second of all, I have recently come across a few more phrases which no longer bare any resemblance to their original denotation.

The American Political Lexicon has now claimed the words "fascist" and "moral relativism":  no longer are either of these words, when used in the political arena, to be confused with their corresponding descendants that might be looked up in an encyclopedia. Fascism simply means "evil" now; it has nothing to do with authoritarianism and even less to do with nationalism. Someone oppose the war on terror? Probably a fascist. Someone oppose capitalism on communist grounds? Definetly a fascist. Don't let the fact checkers who ramble on about how fascism was fundamentally opposed to communism upon its inception tell you otherwise: they are probably fascists too.

"Moral relativism" is also not to be confused with moral relativism. "Moral relativism" (as used by Jonah Goldberg in a recent editorial) describes wussy liberals. Moral relativism (as used by every ethics book I've ever come across) is used to describe a belief that there is no universal or transcendant good or bad act (it's a lot more complicated than that actually, but that's the gist of it). Now it might be tempting to confuse "moral relativism" with moral relativism in that wussy liberals tend to be of the cultural relativist vein in thier meta-ethical theorizing (for the record, I am, though a liberal, fiercely opposed to cultural relativism) and cultural relativism is, in many ways only a minor bifurcation from moral relativism (sans quotation marks). But, as Jonah Goldberg vividly illustrates, even liberals like myself who aren't moral relativists are "moral relativists". For instance, as Goldberg describes, if you are categorically oppossed to torture, you are a "moral relativist". Of course Goldberg didn't mean that you were a moral relativist if you held such views, because that would be essentially a self-contradictory statement, but it is plain as day that you are still a "moral relativist".

Well, I hope that all made sense, because it just gets easier from there

There have been three shootings in American schools in the past week alone and I think I know what's on everyone's mind: If only gun laws were more lenient those poor vicitms could have had a fighting chance for their lives. When will people realize that evil fascists will get guns regardless of laws which will only -de facto- prevent good, law abiding citizens from obtaining similar firearms. Look at it reasonably: a man with an Uzi is has the advantage over the man with only a handgun in a gun fight. Now, here's the rub, people who seem to skip over the second amendment each time they peruse the Bill of Rights have made it so that it is against the law to possess an Uzi or similar submachine gun! In other words, criminals, which by their very definition don't care for the law, are granted an inherent advantage over law abiding citizens. Unbelievable isn't it? Bad people are going to get guns either way, so why shouldn't we just make them accessible for everyone?

Here's an analogy I came up with along those lines:

So the concept of the safety firearms provides works along similar premises as the (now almost forgotten) argument for the peace spreading capabilities of nuclear weapons: one will be deterred from committing offence from fear of "mutually assurred destruction" (MAD). If the USSR hit us in the 50's they knew they'd get hit back; both knew neither could survive a nuclear holocaust so a magnificient peace prevailed. Now, if some hoodlum knows that granny might have a 50 cal Desert Eagle hidden in her fanny pack he's going to think twice about grabbing her purse. Multiply that to the logical end: no one would ever commit a crime in a public space again because if they did they would know that the majority (the law abiding citizens who despise crime and criminals) all were packing heat and thus at an advantage (in numbers and with equal firepower) to the criminal. On that point, I must admit that I'm extremely confused why everyone is so scared that Iran and North Korea might develop nuclear weapons: that's the best hope for peace! Every country should be given nuclear weapons, in fact, so that no one would ever consider fucking with their neighbor again from fear of the consequences. Logically, all war would end in such a circumstance: my motto is that "a house isn't a home without an AK-47" and "a country isn't a nation without a tactical nuclear weapon".

Of course, I have come across some individuals who don't seem to understand this unflappable logic. Bertrand Russell, for one reason or another, was a staunch opponent of nuclear proliferation, and Kalishnikov himself is upset with how widespread his rifle has become. There are some who say that we are all less safe with no gun laws because it will lead to even greater gun usage (never mind that it will undoubtedly only be criminals who are more often shot; they seem to believe that statistics show you are more likely to be shot with your own gun than you are to protect yourself). These are the same people who believe that if we make nuclear weapons more prevelant their is a higher chance that they will be used. How do they not understand that everyone will have nuclear weapons so that they won't be used? How do they not see that if everyone has a gun criminals will be too scared to use theirs? It's these people and their complete inability to understand sound argument who are responsible for the school shooting epidemics, the obscene American homicide rate, and our inability to field an able militia should England's royal family try to annex us in the near future.

Thank God it appears that the gun-hating facsists' world of "moral relativism" seems to be crumbling. Even on my uber-liberal U of M campus there are signs of hope: notably, the movement to allow concealable weapons on campus. Frankly I won't feel safe until I know that each and every person I pass on the Washington Bridge has at least a Beretta under their belts.

Let's hope that the lesson from the Amish tragedy doesn't go unlearned: with each shooting we must remember that it could have been avoided if only their were more guns to stop it.

Posted by bigloeb at 10:33 PM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

I woke up on Thursday with the full knowledge that I would be better off unconscious. At 9 o'clock my alarm goes off and I am informed by MPR's Mid-Morning that "a recent study shows that people trust the media more than academics."

I shudder, and go back to sleep, missing my first class.

Eventually, the feeling of propriety retakes my body: I must go to school, I must pretend that my tuition is worthwhile. Maybe even, somewhere along the way, I will read or hear something to get me out of this bad mood, I wistfully allow myself to believe.

Oh, if only that were the case.

No, after enduring a disinterested conversation on the ontological drawbacks of funtionalism, I open a copy of The Minnesota Daily and go directly to the editorials. Darren Bernard is back, only this time his disdain for logic seems personal. I can't contain myself, so I write this critique: (his article can be found at www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/09/21/69066 )

            For Darren Bernard’s article to be persuasive, it had two difficult problems to confront. It had to 1: show that torture is reliable for extracting truthful information, and 2:  combat the ethical opposition. Unfortunately, Mr. Bernard fails on both accounts.

            Devoting one full paragraph to the hotly debated topic of the efficacy of the practice itself, Bernard cites John Negroponte and Michael Hayden as voices implicitly for the use of torture in gathering intelligence. Obviously both Negroponte and Hayden have a vested interest in seeing that torture tactics are made legal: as Bernard himself mentions earlier, those pesky, idealistic Democrats might prosecute CIA officials guilty of using torture if they can take Congress or the White House. This does not, of course, wholly dismiss Negroponte and Hayden’s testimony, but it does give one reasonable cause to seek out further, (perhaps psychological or medical) testimony on the topic. When looked at more critically, there is obviously no consensus on the efficacy of torture; in fact a prevailing professional sentiment is that torture leads to one talking, but not likely talking truthfully.

            Still, Bernard feels it enough, after inappropriately appealing to authority, to rely on anecdotal evidence for why torture works. Using the powerful qualifier “probably”, Bernard proceeds to imply that torture “broke Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and surely saved thousands of American lives.” The problems of this one sentence could indeed warrant an entire page, but I will attempt to keep to only the most egregious errors. Bernard betrays the fact that he does not, in fact, know if Khalid was tortured, only that if he was, it “surely” saved people. But that claim, freestanding, is quite problematic. Did his capture save people, or did testimony tortured out of him save people? Bernard makes no distinction or even a reason to believe one scenario over the other: he does not mention whether testimony from Khalid has been used, or if used, it has directly saved anyone.     

            Here is one final problem with that paragraph and relying on anecdotal evidence in general: it’s near inevitable contradiction. Consider the case of Ibn al-Shaikh al-Libi. He was detained by the FBI, whereupon CIA request he was flown to Egypt and interrogated with torture techniques. The false information he gave was used by Colin Powell in lead up to the Iraq War: for some reason or another, while being water-boarded al-Libi told information that the interrogators wanted to hear rather than the truth. If Bernard is allowed to uncritically claim that the “probable” torture of Khalid “surely” saved thousands of lives, than I am equally able to say that the definite torture of al-Libi surely led to the loss of thousands of lives: 2,688 lives to be exact.

            So, decisively, Mr. Bernard does not make a good case for the efficacy of torture, but how does he fare on the ethical question? If possible, even worse: while Bernard heroically bested a straw man, in so doing he managed to defeat himself.

            Anyone who believes that laws are enacted only to deter crime has a tenuous grasp on reality. Laws are not made only so that people will think twice about committing a crime: they are made largely so that when someone inevitably does commit a crime they can be held accountable. Stephen Colbert once quipped “laws have never stopped crime from happening, so why don’t we just get rid of laws?” Bernard seems to subscribe to this same vein of reasoning, albeit without the sarcasm. Allow me to clarify for Mr. Bernard: the opposing argument is not to ban torture as a deterrent; it is to ban torture because it is ethically objectionable.  But perhaps Bernard believes torture is wrong only against humans, not the (metaphorical) “monsters” we are at war with. Even granting Bernard the (important) premise that these people have forfeited all human rights, it does not follow that torture might still be ethically used on them. Consider this to be a universal moral premise: it is always wrong to inflict pain purely out of malice. In this respect, even the scariest “monsters” cannot be tortured without the torturers acting unethically.

            This premise could be bypassed if, in fact, torture was proven to yield honest information (as then the torture would not be for malice’s sake) but as I’ve hopefully previously argued there is little reason to believe that torture works in such a way. Sadly, those with the belief that they are torturing for good reasons have their ignorance to foil their conscience; the rest of us hopefully know better.

I doubt the Minnesota Daily will publish it, but its cathartic benefits were undeniable. I only wish that the word restrictions were relieved a bit: I have about 4 pages worth more of material I would have liked to include, but to make even my fundamental points I used the majority of my word allotment. Maybe I'll just have to learn how to stop being so "long winded", or just stop being so critical, but I just can't seem to help myself: published idiocy offends me.

Posted by bigloeb at 5:04 PM CDT

Updated: Friday, 22 September 2006 5:33 PM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink

Yes, you read the title correctly: The Weekly Loeb will now actually be a weekly occurrence. Well those are the tenative plans anyways; I suppose it's concievable that it might be a day or two late every now and then but, thanks to my easy thursday schedule I will likely post every week. I'm sure you can all hardly contain yourself (all 300 of you, as the counter informs me), but there is a downside to the new, more punctual loeb: primarily that some postings might not be in as great depth as they used to be. This week is an example of such a posting.

First, I was going to write about Wal-Mart. I saw two conservative editorials on it only today, one by George Will (a decent philosophical/logical critique of which can be found at http://thenonsequitur.com) and one in the Minnesota Daily (which was so pathetic that a critique need not be offered). At some indeterminate point while formulating what I was going to write, I completely lost interest in the subject. Anyone who reads this blog regularly is aware that this is an unfortunate proclivity of mine. For better or worse, I abandoned this topic for one of a less concise, more rambling manner:

Why aren't our leaders held to the same standards as Intro Philosophy courses?

If you so desire, throughout this article you can substitute whatever major you want in place of philosophy, so long as that major's papers require any degree of non-dogmatic critical reasoning (I'm tempted to say this precludes psychology, but that might just be an uninformed bias created by pop 'psycho-analysis' I sometimes overhear. To the many psychology majors I am friends with, I mean no disrespect to the study, only to the rampant misuse of it in public discourse).

If I was to write a paper on any given subject and blatantly contradict myself, I would not only expect a bad grade, I would desire one: it would show that my teacher is at least paying a little attention to me. So, if George W. Bush says "we are doing everything we can within the law to interrogate these people" and is rebuffed by (in this case Matt Lauer) saying "according to Geneva conventions, operating secret prisons like the C.I.A. does is against international law", Bush's new response "well, we don't agree with [those laws]" is worthy of a failing grade. Being that I plan on devoting my academic life to the study of ethics, I was so struck by the consequences accepting Bush's reasoning would allow that I can not help but dissect it further.

Does G.W. implicitly suppose that he can act against the law if his greater judgement feels the law to be wrong? NSA wiretaps and comments like the ones outlined would seem to suggest so. The question, then, is why should he be so allowed? Perhaps Bush is in fact an avid devotee of both Thoreau and MLK and believes that all people should follow this priniciple: to put it more elegantly than G.W. could, that "one has a moral obligation to disobey unethical laws." I personally agree with that idea, so I will grant it to Bush. Yet a new question arises: how does one determine which laws are unethical and thus rightly disobeyed? Every year hundreds of people who "morally oppose" federal and state taxation are brought to court and 99 times out of 100 found guilty of tax evasion for good reason; but are the laws G.W. is so civily disobeying unethical? Well, I suppose that depends on one's personal views on regulations meant to prevent torture. In that same interview, Bush was asked about the recently disclosed interrogative practise of "waterboarding" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding for details on the process) and Bush replied that he would not speak of it because it "would help terrorists adapt their strategies" to counter. What this means is that we do, in fact, use waterboarding in our secret Eastern European prisons; if we didn't there would be absolutely no reason -political or otherwise- that Bush would not simply deny the use of the torture technique altogether. What does this all mean, from an ethical perspective? If waterboarding is moral but irrationally disallowed by the Geneva conventions, Bush has reserved himself a spot at the metaphorical Walden Pond. If however, by some miracle someone can make a convincing argument that waterboarding is immoral and the laws Bush disobeys are not unethical, than Bush is either saying that as president he is above the law, or that he simply doesn't care about law. By his constant smirk, he might very well be saying both.

As a sidenote in G.W.'s defence, he did actually try today to legally amend the Geneva conventions, much as he tried to legally allow uses of torture in interrogation, much as he tried to change the meaning of torture, much as he claims the administration doesn't torture anyway.

When G.W. Bush was held to college standards, his grades reflected his lack of reason. But how does our second in command fare? Not too much better, I would say.

Cheney, a greater spin artist than Bush, at least has a bit more subtlety in his disdain for reason. If anyone can still remember, our original motive for Iraq was 9/11: a connection between Saddam and Osama vouched for by Cheney. Last weekend, he admitted there was no connection between Saddam and 9/11. That's no problem, because the real reason we went into Iraq was WMDs: as Cheney said, we don't want the next 9/11 to be with a mushroom cloud. Last weekend, he admitted there was no evidence of WMDs. Well, that's not a big deal, because we actually went in there because of Al Qaeda: as Cheney said, to bring the fight to them rather than on our soil. Last weekend it was revealed that of all the people the Bush administration wants to charge for crimes related to 9/11, absolutely none of them were either from Iraq or picked up in Iraq. Al Zarhawi? Well, it just so happens that maybe he wasn't in fact in Iraq during 9/11, but after we invaded Afghanistan, Cheney tells us, Zarhawi went to Baghdad. I don't actually remember the "hunt for one of Osama's lieutenants" being the foremost reason given for spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an Iraqi invasion, but Cheney doesn't seem to mind: when asked, Cheney actually responded that he would do it (Iraq) all over again and wouldn't change a thing! Nevermind that is has been more or less established that, from merely a tactical perspective, we should have sent more troops in the first place; even that trifling detail Cheney would not have altered.

From a philosophical argument's perspective, Cheney has a bit more leeway than Bush, in that his statements aren't self-contradictory (we're within the law/I don't agree with the law so I don't abide), but they never the less have been proven false; contradictory by contingent reality. One large reason I would give Cheney a failing grade if I was his teacher would be his presentment of his argument: he did not say "we think they have WMDs", he said that they do have WMDs and pointed to the bunkers in which they could be found. This erases the loophole that he could otherwise exploit by saying he was going on probability: probabilities can forgivably turn out against the odds; facts cannot. On the same note, the since scrutinized "One percent doctrine" he offers as an excuse is an equally poor argument, from a hypothetical teacher's perspective. My red pen would make only the following comment: "possibility is not the same as probablity". If we we're willing to start 3 year long wars over every threat that was one percent possible Canada might very well become the 51st state.

Ignoring any personal ill-will I might hold against the current administration, the point I am trying to make is only this: methods of reasoning with holes that would not go unnoticed in freshman college classes need to go scrutinized; they cannot be applied to policy, even if by some accident they do work out. The problem, as I see it, might not be so much conservative ideology fundamentally at odds with liberal ideology, but the disdain for elementary logic becoming so subtly pervasive that arguments based only on "feelings" are considered acceptable in rational dialogue. If we really want to move in the right direction, whatever ideology that direction might in fact most closely mirror, we must first establish what will and what will not be allowed in the arguments we make for our positions.

If there's one thing we should all agree on, its that a contradiction will not stand. Simple as it might be, it seems to be a logical property in dispute these days.

Posted by bigloeb at 5:58 PM CDT

Updated: Thursday, 14 September 2006 6:41 PM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink