More moral sanction

Here is a quote from Sen. McCain, from the first debate.

"What Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a "stinking
corpse," and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments."

Why, precisely? This is sort of like saying that if I know my boss Fred is a racist I should refuse to work for my employer until they fire Fred, because if I work for them and thus end up interacting with Fred, I'm legitimizing his racism. Don't get me wrong, clearly there's a point where you stop talking. But I'd think that point is after talking has proven to be ineffective, not, you know, a complete refusal right from the outset.

Let's Godwin's law this shit right here and now and use the classic Hitler example. Everybody likes to trot out Hitler, ooo this one guy wanted to have talks with him and Winston said piss off, and they did war on Hitler and that's what won WWII! Yeah, here's my thing. Clearly wanting to do *only* diplomatic talks was stupid. But I fail to see why you couldn't have had a shot at diplomacy while at the same time preparing for war if it becomes necessary. And when I say preparing for war, I don't mean oh well we've sort of started looking at it but it'll take us another half a year. I mean prepare so that if it's clear the diplomacy has gone south and the guy's just batshit crazy, ala Hitler, you're ready to strike immediately, if that's what's necessary.

But I guess that wouldn't work, because simply communicating with Hitler would've meant that England approved of every crazy and sick idea he ever had, whether they knew about it or not. Besides, it'd make 'em look like pussies. Clearly as Americans we are not pussies. So you know, I guess talking with people, even people you violently disagree with, is just stupid and all. Of course, I don't know how you'll ever change their minds if you don't talk with them, but maybe that's just me. Maybe Mccain knows that there's a secret mind control ray in the bowels of the Pentagon or something. Or hey, here's an idea, maybe we could try some more fucked up PsyOps that don't really work! Woo! Just as long as we don't talk to them. Because talking to == I approve of everything you've ever said! Whatever.

Failure

Last night on some show, there was a guy, a Republican I assume, talking about the current financial situation. He offered that the whole bailout thing was a bad idea. Why? Because he thinks that how capitalism learns is by seeing failure. Let's set aside for the moment that capitalism is an abstraction and thus can't "learn" anything. Clearly what he's driving at is that capitalists learn from failure.

Does this work? Do we have any historical examples to go on? What he's saying is that if we bail out the banks and such, nobody will learn, it's a free handout. Essentially what he's getting at is that if the economy has to collapse, oh well, because that's how capitalism learns, by seeing failures happen. If capitalism doesn't have failures it'll essentially get too big for its britches and assume it can do anything with no consequences. I'm extrapolating a bit here but I don't really see that there's another conclusion to be drawn from the statement that capitalism learns by seeing failures happen.

OK, so, back to the question at hand. Do we have anything to examine to find out whether he's correct, that capitalism learns by seeing failures occur? You know it's coming. Of course we do. It's called the Great Depression. Now seeing as how some are saying that if we don't do something, we might have another Great Depression or something even worse, I have to conclude one of two things.

The first is that he's simply wrong, capitalism doesn't learn by failure in any way whatsoever. Left to its own devices, it'll just keep doing the same thing, because that's exactly what seems to have happened here. However, there's another conclusion, and I think this one is even scarier.

The other conclusion is this. Capitalism indeed learns from seeing failures happen. But if this is so, how do we account for the current situation, which seems to be repeating similar mistakes? Quite simply, the Great Depression is too far in the past. Capitalism hasn't seen a failure happen recently enough, and it's forgotten what it's learned.

OK, so why is this scary? You might say the same thing about a person. Because what it basically suggests is that every generation or so, roughly speaking, capitalism just needs to see another failure happen in order to learn. Keep in mind we're not saying that this failure will probably happen and then capitalism will learn something new. The conclusion is that capitalism forgets its learning, and has to be reminded every so often by another failure. Is that really an ideology we want to support? In order for capitalism to function properly, every generation or so we need another Great Depression or something nearly equivalent, perhaps confined to a single market if that's even possible, in order for capitalism to learn the same damn thing over and over and over again?

On a similar note, ideology dominating sensibleness, some Republican woman was talking about the current bailout too. House Republicans decided to propose their own plan, and what she kept saying about it over and over again was, they're being strong, because the other plan's socialism, and we don't want socialism! We don't want socialism at all! Shades of fundamentalism here. We're not concerned about what's best for the people, we're just all jazzed up that it might be socialism? Which of course means that the good Republicans must stand strong against it.

Keep in mind here, I'm not saying that the other plan is what's best, as such. But both of these statements strike me as pretty frightening. In the latter all we're concerned about is that we have the correct political ideology. In the former, it's as though we're saying, don't stop your child from playing with the fan, he needs to break a finger to see that's a bad idea. What? Yes I know he did it just a month ago, but apparently he didn't learn or he forgot. Now leave him alone so he can do it again and maybe he'll learn this time.

I'd like to add something here concerning capitalism and generations. People who argue that failures are teaching tools will say something like the following. No, we're not encouraging failure, nobody wants failure, and you have to understand that these are "market forces" causing this to happen, the failures just occur, so we may as well learn from them. Let's get something straight here. Remember how I said that capitalism is an abstraction, and thus can't "learn" anything? This is vitally important to understand.

I don't believe there are market forces, in the usual sense. That is, when people speak about "market forces" what they mean is something like, here is how the market works, and these things just happen. It's like saying that nobody's responsible for your house getting destroyed in a tornado. This is true. However, people are responsible for the market. In a tornado, wind conditions occur, just so, and the tornado just so happens to hit your house, as opposed to your friend's house two towns over.

When people talk about "market forces", they're saying the same thing, it just so happens that, due to the "market forces" acting in just such and such a manner, your company just got destroyed, or you just lost your house, or so on. Notice BTW that rarely are "market forces" invoked for anything good. It's the opposite of "God helped us win this game", nobody ever says "damn it God, thanks for making us lose!" Similarly, if things go wrong, it's "market forces", but if there's a stunning coup in the business world, why that's whoever had the gumption and initiative and drive and .... to go make it happen!

This is why I find the rabbid opposition to "socialism", without considering the effects on the people, and the idea that capitalism just has to see failures happen to learn so scary. We're totally removing people from the equation. What? You lost your house and your business? Oh well, sorry, but capitalism has to see failures happen in order to learn. What? You lost your house and your business? Yeah, but at least our plan to help wasn't "socialist"!

I'm not saying here that there's any way to save everybody. I'm not saying that sometimes you don't have to make hard decisions. What I am suggesting is that these abstractions, much like "collateral damage", simply illiminate any connection to the real consequences. These decisions don't become something to be deeply and morally considered, they don't become a situation where we try to limit as much as possible the unfortunate consequences, they essentially become writeoffs. What? No no, we didn't kill civilians, that's "collateral damage", you can't make an omlet without breaking some eggs. Let me change my previous sentence. These decisions should be deeply and morally *agonized* over. I want people who realize the extreme gravity of war, or the economy, or such, to be making these decisions, not people who are writing them off as failures from which capitalism learns, or at least it's not socialist, or oh well shit happens in war. For instance, if war is hell, and we know this, and we know that morality pretty much goes out the window for both sides to a perhaps greater or lesser degree, shouldn't we really use it as the *last* option, when everything else has truly failed? Yet another case where whatever hasn't learned from "seeing failures happen"?

P.S.

Pretty sure I misspelled omlet, I don't feel like looking it up. Deal with it.

Moral sanction

It's not just for Objectivists anymore! First let's get the main article out of the way. This is an article about Obama.

OK, so what's this moral sanction business all about? Moral sanction is a concept from Objectivism. Here's what the Ayn Rand Lexicon has to say about moral sanction. At first glance this doesn't seem all that bad, sort of like the idea behind they came for the Communists, but I wasn't a Communist. However, let's take a glance at how moral sanction is supposed to work in practical terms. Essentially what the Objectivists are saying is this. If you are in any way associated or dealing with somebody who is evil, you morally sanction them, i.e. support their ideas. Note that this seems to be the completely opposite meaning of "moral sanction" from how it's generally used in philosophy. There it seems to mean what you'd expect, you sanction (punish) someone for a moral lapse.

OK, so what's this got to do with the original article? The article attacks Obama's statement that Bill Ayers had nothing to do with the formation of his political ideas. Bill ayers is apparently super duper scary and evil, because he was in a group that bombed the Pentagon, and he like, never apologized and stuff, this all according to the article, you understand. So how does the article go about disproving Obama's statement that he and Ayers didn't exchange ideas on a regular basis?

Well it seems that Obama was on a board for something that was Ayers idea, and they worked together on that board. Here's where the moral sanction comes in. Because Obama dealt with the daily operations of an educational foundation which Ayers was connected with, it's obvious that Obama approves of Ayers and all he stands for and clearly they exchanged political ideas. In other words, moral sanction, as defined by Objectivism. You're probably more familiar with it under another name, guilt by association. Here's why it's a problem, aside from it's being incredibly stupid.

Let's assume that the article is completely correct. Obama and Ayers have a connection and they talked frequently during these board meetings for this foundation. How does this in any way prove that Obama's political ideas are based on or inspired by those of Ayers? I would assume that they pretty much talked about things related to the running of the foundation, myself. The body of the article clearly does not support the claim being made of it, namely that it refutes Obama's statement concerning Ayers and his ideas. On the contrary, the true argument is that Obama gave Ayers moral sanction, in other words, Obama is guilty because he is somehow associated with Ayers. Good job, conservatives. That vaunted rationality is really working out for you, you seem to have such a firm grasp of its principles and how to use them.

Oh the humanity

The milk of human kindness flows thick and fast through the veins of some people, funny how a lot of them are atheists and/or Objectivists. Check out the following link, and don't forget to read the comments!

Some points: I don't necessarily agree with the Christians. For instance, if people with DS are just like us, some of them must be dissatisfied with life or irritated and so on. However, the claim that these people are missing the point of the original post doesn't really stand up either. The charitable reading they're trying to give it is that what they're saying is that people should have a choice, that the decision to abort a fetus with genetic or other abnormalities is just that, a person's choice, and they should be allowed to make it free from religious pressures.

However, given the claim that the only reason people knowingly have a child with DS or other disabilities is so they can display their faith, akin to the whipping scars on the backs of Catholics of the Middle Ages, and the corolary that if you're rational, the only real decision is to abort because otherwise you're not being rational and letting your faith lead you, belies this reading. Clearly the author and similar commenters feel just the opposite way from the Christians. For the Christians, aborting is wrong because it's a life and that's murder and God said no, hence, it is irrational. For the author, condemning your unborn child to a life of suffering is compared with child rape, and this is clearly irrational, better to illiminate suffering altogether.

I should add here that the author and similar folk aren't really doing reason and rationality any favors here. While I agree that the decision to have a child, disabled or otherwise, is a choice that should be made by the people involved and nobody else, clearly we've gone beyond that statement to some sort of whacky extreme. The author describes people with DS as "freaks", and several commenters seem to consider them subhuman. The author, interestingly, doesn't really seem to oppose that position. That's good, give the impression that reason leads to the categorization of some beings as subhuman and calls for their illimination. Way to go, you use that rational mind girlfriend!