Archives

Topics

Homeland Security Advisory System

ELEVATED

Significant Risk of
Terror Attacks

Links

Sid's home page
Atom, RSS, E-mail, Search

Sara Cammeresi

Den Beste errs on fundamentals, as usual —

Den Beste can be very interesting to read when he writes about topics related to history or the military, but he usually blunders about when he tries to tackle some more fundamental aspect of philosophy. True to form, he did so in his latest missive on amending the Constitution.

I began to hear the klaxons pipe up when he used the term `social contract,' but he regained some standing with:

The question of citizen rights is very fundamental to our system. The basic humanist philosophy which underlay[sic] the American system was known as `natural rights,' a statement that humans rights are inherent and not granted to them by governments.

I would dispute some of his terminology, but he's at least on the right track here. Unfortunately, he shortly proceeds to contradict this principle:

In any society, all recognition of liberties is a balancing act, a matter of tradeoffs. There must be always be compromises. Your desire to pop me one in the nose has to be balanced against my desire to not have my nose broken.... All of us have to accept certain limits on our liberty because those limits make possible the liberty of others in other ways.

And therein lies utilitarianism. How are we to determine where my rights stop and yours end? How far may I swing my fist? Den Beste has no answer: we are thus left to assume that the distinction is arbitrary and not philosophical issue.

In order for man to exist, and in order for him to exist qua man, the rational animal, as opposed to qua ape or qua grisly bear or qua fish, he must be free to use the one tool he has since he has no others: his mind. Whereas other animals have claws, sharp teeth, camouflaged hides, and pre-wired knowledge (instincts), man has no tools but what he makes with his mind, a mind which is born tabula rasa.

For man to live qua man, he must be free to use and develop his mind, thus he must be protected from any acts which would subvert his mind: physical force and the threat thereof. Any action which develops or furthers a man's mental process aids his life; any that hinder or prevent the use of his mind destroy his life. The former category are called values, those things which one acts to gain or keep.

You do have a right to swing your fist, but that right stops at my nose, and it stops there neither from some prior agreement into which we have previously entered nor from some dubious undefined `social contract,' but from the nature of man and what his nature requires in order to live.

posted by Sid at 20.41 / 112     [ Comments: 0 ]

The terrorists have won —

CNN report yet another reason to not travel by air. I can imagine the fun I would have trying to board a plane now decked out with my mobile phone and strange cameras. Ahh, the joys of trying to prove a negative (heheh).

posted by Sid at 08.13 / 592     [ Comments: 1 ]

Really roughing it —

Bah, I wrote up a brilliant HBL post integrating HB's point on camping with photography and the 11 September attacks only to find that my mail bounced due to his mailbox being over quota. He must really be roughing it.

posted by Sid at 10.30 / 687     [ Comments: 0 ]

Removal day nears —

I and my glorious blog will presently be offline for a few days. With luck, the outage will last from my forthcoming removal day, 10 August until 12 August. I know it will be hard to survive without my blog's web presence, but you are all smart, resourceful people who I'm sure can figure out something.

posted by Sid at 10.48 / 700     [ Comments: 0 ]

Houston school row —

Just like everybody in Houston knows, CNN have found out exactly how much the HISD schools suck, and they've said so on their front page, to boot. (Yours truly matriculated from Cy Fair ISD.)

posted by Sid at 20.39 / 110     [ Comments: 0 ]