Crooked Timber: Faith in progress

Crooked Timber: Faith in progress

"Faith in progress" on the Right does tend to meld with their general fantasy-land point-of-view on everything political.

The standard Left response to the prospect of Global Warming, etc., also tends to be 90% dreamworld.

The acceleration of progress since the end of the 14th century has brought the human race to rates of change, which are now nothing short of dizzying.

My Grandmother, in her lifetime, saw the Wright Brothers launch a powered airplane at Kitty Hawk AND Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon! She saw the War to end All Wars AND the Second World War AND Vietnam. She could remember Henry Ford introducing the $5/day, and Henry sic-ing Harry Bennett and his goons on Unionists. (She lived in Detroit.)

It makes us all nervous, I suppose. It makes only some of us, stupid. Unfortunately, that "some" of us is in danger of becoming a voting majority. Whether they vote for right-wing stupid or left-wing stupid will probably not be all that important.

The future is coming at us so fast, that we can hardly take it in. We are all resisting it -- at least, everyone is resisting some parts of it. And, that resistance is dangerous. The critiques of the Right by the Left, and the critiques of the Left by the Right are probably the most valuable thought we have available, because each, in their critiques, express actual critical thinking.

As human dominion of the earth accelerates in scope and power, we assume responsibility for the earth in equal measure. We cannot escape this responsibility. If we fail to establish responsible control, we are doomed.

We cannot restrain the increase in our power, which is coming from the ever-accelerating advance of knowledge. We cannot stop "evil" by attempting to obstruct that advance of knowledge. We cannot avoid that responsibility by misguided attempts at self-restraint.

We have to take control of things on this planet, not as a power trip, but as the responsibility, which inevitably comes with power, power, which comes with increasing knowledge.

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: John Yoo's Very Expansive Read of Section 2340A

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: John Yoo's Very Expansive Read of Section 2340A: "Mackey came to the conclusion that ''if the interrogator followed the exact same regime -- slept, ate . . . and took breaks on the same schedule as the prisoner -- there was no way to argue'' that such treatment was cruel. There is even a name for an interrogator staying with a prisoner until one or the other of them breaks: it's called ''monstering.'' Double-teaming a prisoner, in which different interrogators take turns sleeping, was considered immoral, Mackey says. Because monstering was so hard for an interrogator to endure, it was used only when something important was at stake and the prisoner seemed close to breaking. One interrogator kept a prisoner in a booth for 29 straight hours. It was worth it, Mackey reports: the prisoner had been a translator for Osama bin Laden and disclosed a Qaeda plot to use the chemical agent ricin."

This is rather like a parent deciding to spank his child only with his bare hand. The parent will feel pain in his own hand proportional to what the child feels -- actually more pain, because the hand is more sensitive than the butt. Using a paddle or other instrument leaves the parent without sufficient feedback to maintain control.

This actually a profound point, concerning all "ethical" interaction between prisoner and keeper. All social interaction, where ethics govern, is both a game and a system of control, which is another way of saying that it is a social institution, with rules. What's ethical, depends on the nature of the institution; given an institution, certain ethical precepts for that institution, follow.

There's certainly room for meta-ethical consideration of whether the institution, itself, is a good one. Within the context of the institution of slavery, I suppose, there is room for ethical imperatives on the master to take care of the slaves; the fact that there were ethics of slavekeeping doesn't make slavery a good institution; a completely convincing case can be made that slavery, by its very nature, is incompatible with ethical behavior in the most general sense; that's a meta-ethical case against slavery.

There's also a meta-ethical case against some forms of involuntary interrogation. That case, even though we appear to have forgotten about it, is a very, very strong one. So strong, that both the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention bar some forms of involuntary interrogation.

If you are going to "compel" testimony, so to speak, there have to be "ethical" precepts, to keep the interaction from spinning completely out of control. It may be that employing compulsion, at all, is unethical, in a meta-ethical sense, and we should not even go there, just as we should not enslave people.

Legal Fiction: Legal Analysis of Roe v. Wade

Legal Fiction

Legal Fiction takes the position that Roe v. Wade is "bad" Constitutional law, but, being pro-choice, invites others to take a stab at justifying its constitutionality.

Legal Fiction just doesn't like the whole "right to privacy" thing. "There is simply no right to privacy listed in the Constitution. As a textualist, my jurisprudence inclines me to throw the whole thing out. Textually speaking, the only possibilities are the Ninth Amendment . . . . "

The 9th Amendment says that you cannot construe the list of rights in the Constitution as limiting people's rights to the list.

That there is no right to privacy "listed" is not dispositive. Maybe being a "textualist" means you wish it were. But, the text of the 9th Amendment bars that interpretation.

It is true that the 9th Amendment does not, itself, create a list, but the point is that fundamental rights are not limited to a list, in the Constitution or elsewhere. There is no list. So, the fact that the right to privacy is not on "the list" or any list is not dispositive. Period. So stop arguing that it is, and get on with your life.

I know that leaves things somewhat murky, and people who wish there were a list will be forever frustrated, but that's the way it is. The Constitution is just not very clear regarding what are fundamental rights, even while it is clear about limiting government's authority to infringe them.

Abortion is one of several issues related to sexual relationships and reproduction, where there is a fundamental divide over the government's authority vs individual liberty. In the authoritarian model, sexual relationships and intercourse would be strictly licensed and regulated by the State (and the Church); in the libertarian model, sexual relationships, etc. would be a matter of individual choice and contract. There are few areas of political controversy, where the legal divide is so clear; the uniting question is whether an individual retains the right to govern herself, or whether the right to govern sexual and reproductive conduct has been wholly ceded to the State.

Constitutionally, I think it would be clear that the Constitution did not grant the Federal government any power whatsoever to govern people's personal relationships and sexual lives. Zip! Nada! The only question ought to be whether the 14th Amendment limited the States in this regard.

There's no list of people's fundamental rights in the 14th Amendment, anymore than there is in the 9th Amendment. It would certainly be easier, if there were. But, there isn't.

George W. Bush, Philosopher-King - Why he won't debate the math of Social Security reform. By Chris Suellentrop

George W. Bush, Philosopher-King - Why he won't debate the math of Social Security reform. By Chris Suellentrop: "Private accounts have different virtues, Wehner explained. 'Our goal is to provide a path to greater opportunity, more freedom, and more control for individuals over their own lives. That is what the personal account debate is fundamentally about.' In other words, it's a philosophical debate about the role of government, not a mathematical debate about how to make Social Security's outflows match its inflows."

Oh, please! The plan is to make the very rich, richer, at the expense of everyone else! It is all about redistributing income and wealth in favor of the very rich.

Ideology is just a silly game, a way to distract the liberal and the stupid.

Iraq Home Page

Iraq Home Page

Let me follow Kos, in pointing out the White House website appears to have run out of good news from Iraq, shortly before the U.S. elections.

Interesting that.

We Are All Torturers Now

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: We Are All Torturers Now

Bush has appointed a man opposed to the rule of law, to be Attorney General of the United States. Bush has appointed an advocate of torture to be Attorney General of the United States.

Torture, anyone ???

If anyone needs proof that George W. Bush is evil, then look around, and notice that we are about to engage in a national discussion of the merits, legal and otherwise, of torture.

Eugene Volokh writes, 'too often I hear arguments that simply run more or less as follows: "If we start using torture, we lose any possible claim to the moral high ground." "Once we start using torture, are we any better than al Qaeda?" "When fighting monsters, we must never become monsters ourselves."'

' It seems to me that this sort of argument is ultimately deeply unpersuasive, because it relies too much on moral abstractions that sound appealing but simply do not confront the powerful realist counterarguments.'

Glenn Reynolds, a law professor and all-around fool of a conservative, who has gained fame as Instapundit, writes,
'I think the effort to turn this into an anti-Bush political issue is a serious mistake, and the most likely outcome will be, in essence, the ratification of torture (with today's hype becoming tomorrow's reality) and a political defeat for the Democrats. And the highly politicized way in which the issue is raised is likely to ensure that there's no useful discussion of exactly how, in terms of incarceration, etc., we should treat potentially very dangerous people who do not fall readily within the laws of war.'

I think Reynolds may well be right. The Democrats are not competent, yet, for this kind of fight. As far as Gonzales's nomination to be Attorney General is concerned, the Democrats could sidestep the issue. Torture is illegal, and Gonzales should have upheld the rule of law; he did not; he should not be AG. This is not a mere technical point. Events at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have hurt the U.S. position in Iraq and in the world.

The academic, philosophical discussion is hazardous in the extreme. By its nature, it is analytical, and, of course, misses the essence of problem.

The essence of the problem is that torture is just the continuation of a fight. I am fighting against you and your buddies. I chase you, I shoot at you, I capture you. Do I stop, now that you are helpless, or do I keep right on, abusing and assaulting you?

What the War on Terror enthusiasts say, is, yes. Go right on. Before I captured you, I was shooting at you, trying to kill you, why shouldn't I go right on, trying to kill you? Or, worse?

Bush is very good at the kind of strutting around, which is required, to portray dramatically, the idea of going right on assaulting the enemy, even after the enemy has been captured. He's good at it, because he's a coward. If a Democrat were willing or able to make that point, there might be a chance of something good coming out of this.