But, I'd like to explore a different topic that I have been ruminating on the past few days. What do I believe. Here are the first five. Its harder than it looks, what are yours?I have thought about what I believe for a very long time, but find myself heartily unwilling to settle on anything solid. Clearly, however, I don't agree with you on most things...including this list, though I'm not sure we disagree on generalities as much as I am uneasy with the specifics. For example, I agree with #2 insofar as we assume we live in a system where the legislative process works. For example, I believe it may be acceptable to break laws, but you must be willing to suffer the consequences (ie. Gandhi and the Civil Rights movement). I would also disagree with the fact that parents shouldn't have to monitor what is on television for their kids to watch, mainly because it comes down to the same issue of who-gets-to-decide values and that I believe that just as it has always been a parental responsibility to monitor their children to prevent them from being eaten by lions ("Kids! Stay away from the Lion Den!"), it is equally a parental responsibility to monitor their children's television watching. I, of course, acknowledge that these are all of your personal views and values, while I am responding with a much more general and socio-political response, which is not entirely fair. Though I still disagree with you. I'm going to regret starting a list of this sort, but since you've started with an opening salvo, I may as well honor you with a response...so here goes...I'll begin with blander assertions that are less personal.
1.)The greatest joy a man can have is to have a woman by his side to grow old with. The second greatest joy is to have children.
2.)If you don't like the rules, you change them by legislative process. You don't break them, and you don't circumvent them.
3.) Parents shouldn't have to monitor what is on television for their kids to watch. Television should be okay for everyone to watch. It was once, and those old shows are still pretty good.
4.) A man should never hit a woman. Ever. The only crimes worse are murder and rape.
5.) Education is a precious commodity, and it should be funded over any other priority short of national defence.
1) I believe that it doesn't have to be this way. Above all else, whatever the problems we face in this world, I believe that it doesn't have to be this way. This is the necessary component in believing we can and should work for progress.
2) I believe individual human experience and human joy and suffering should be the beginning and end of all government and morality. This is a reflection of my decision to ground my personal "metaphysics" solely in human consciousness, being aware I can't go any further (ie. God) without blind assertions. (Think Descartes' cogito ergo sum without all the circular crap that somehow leads to God.)
3) I believe liberty and personal freedom can only extend so far as does not unduly danger the security, liberty, and happiness of others.
4) I believe in nature and nurture.
5) I believe that no idea intended for the betterment of society should ever dehumanize individuals, whether it be into cogs, calculations, angels or demons.
6) I believe there is a human capacity for goodness and compassion, but a human inclination towards selfishness and indifference.
7) I believe systemic ideologies of truth are pedagogically useful, but destructive in practice.
8) I believe that some contradiction is inherent in all human ideas and may be a signal of honesty, but that some contradictions are violently hypocritical. (ya like the contradiction there?)
9) I believe there is a "system", but that the system is a product of aggregate individual behavior filtered through an institutional and cultural framework. I emphatically do not believe that the "system" is a conscious product of evil minds.
10) And I do believe that the "system" is fucked up, malfunctioning, and in need of serious work.
Anybody else? Please feel more free to respond to this than usual...because I really would like to see what people think, either on their own, or about what I believe.
6 comments:
Well, this should be a lively discussion topic that should provide a pleasent distraction from my "Plaintiff's Motion to Strike Defendants' Motion for Leave to File an Interlocutory Appeal Out of Time."
My comments on your comments on my beliefs:
1.) You made no comment.
2.) I thought about quoting the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison "that which is not right is not law" but that lead me to question who decides what is right. And then I started thinking about how funny the name Lloyd was. So I left it this way.
I agree with you, that this statement is only correct insofar as the legislative process is working. In the case of Gandhi, obviously the legislative process was not really operable, and in the case of Civil Rights, they turned to protest marches after the legislative and judicial process failed them. The key to both was that both were non violent protests, and were able to change the legislative process. Once violence became a part of the Civil Rights movement, I think it went beyond the bounds of my argument in number 2.
3.) I agree that parents have a duty to monitor the activities of their children. However, television, as a public commodity should be somethng that is safe for the whole family to watch. Television has pushed the envelope to far, and I believe that television can and should be an excellent bonding experience for the entire family. Therefore, television should be appropriate for the entire family.
4.) You made no comment
5.) You made no comment
My comments on your list:
1.) I agree. But see my next list, #1
2.) I disagree, for I believe that mankind needs to believe in a higher power and an afterlife, or else we begin to lose a sense of what's right and wrong. Think Cardinal Richeleu "The state has no afterlife, therefore the state need obey no morality."
3.) Not sure on this one. I recuse myself.
4.) Agreed, kind of. See #2 below.
5.) So general its kinda hard not to agree, unless you're Adolphus Huxley.
6.) Agreed, kind of. See #2 below.
7.) Totally disagree. Truth by its very nature cannot be destructive. It is when non-truths are treated as truths (e.g. Blacks are inferior), that destruction begins.
8.) No comment.
9.) No commment.
10.) I believe that the system (at least insofar as we confine the system to America) works pretty well, or at least it used to (i.e. under the Founding Father's rubrics.) The system just needs some tinkering from time to time.
My next six are:
1.) The world is gradually going from order to disorder. The world was better, and the situation is getting worse. Humanity is regressing, not progressing.
2.) Mankind base reaction is evil. This is tempered by some of the guiding structures of society.
3.) I believe in the free market, and that it is the government's task to keep the market free, other than that the government should not tamper with it. That being said, I think that some things are sacred, and should not be available for profit. Like Major League Baseball. The owners of Major League teams are caretakers of a nation trust.
4.) I believe that the Designated Hitter is a stupid idea.
5.) I believe that the 17th Amendment has done more to emasculate the people of the united states than any other, and that it should be repealed. The vox populi was far better reflected under the Constitutions original plan.
6.) Some degree of logic needs to be inherent in judicial decisions. Using the commerce clause to regulate everything under the sun simply cannot be right. Roe v. Wade is founded on no judicial logic whatsoever.
SJ
I AM SO PISSED OFF. I just wrote for like 30 minutes, and I forgot to click which name I wanted to post with...and it fucking erased the entire thing. What a stupid waste of time. I think this may have effectively killed off this entire thread because I'm so annoyed.
Don't do that. I'll have to actually focus on work.
Ok. I'm back. And I just finished my Int'l Finance readings (my lord that didn't make any sense), so I have a few minutes to kill before class. And what better place than my own self-aggrandizing blog?
First, I'd like to note that this has already become enormously unwieldy, so I'm not sure how to discuss anything except just throwing out desultory scattershots at what you said.
First, about television, do you believe that books and magazines are a public commodity that should be reduced to the least common denominator to relieve the burden of monitoring children? Or if you think this is an uncharitable interpretation of what you're saying, are you only referring to basic, free cable like NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox etc? I'm also not clear how making parents monitor their children's television watching detracts in any way from television's ability to be an excellent bonding experience for a family.
2) The problem of "truth" is going to be gratingly irritating for both of us to discuss, simply because I don't know where you're getting this "truth" from, and am always going to be convinced that it's a bald assertion of some sort. For what it's worth, I'm basically simplifying (and god is this simplifying) Kant's idea that there is a level of abstraction in ideas above which any and every assertion is going to encounter an equally valid counter-assertion. (ie. There is a god. There isn't a god.) Practically, all I mean to say is that for any and every thing you will hold to be truth, I guarantee that there are lots of people who are going to passionately disagree with you, whether it's objectively true or not. Thus, in such a world of varying opinion, if you attempt to implement and instrumentalize such truth, how can that NOT lead to destruction? What I'm saying, in short (again), is that I don't think it matters, objectively, whether Blacks are inferior or not -- the destructiveness lies in the actualization of such a belief in truth. (Boy that was a long discussion with no satisfying payoff.)
3) I simply won't accept the internal "system" of the US as a benchmark, because our internal behavior clearly and undeniably has effects on the other 95% of humanity. Which draws me back to my basic foundation of concern for individual humans as humans, and not for humans as citizens. Can the whole world live like we do? (that's not rhetorical. and it's not really a debatable question.)
4) I have noticed in two places that you seem to yearn for some lost-paradise of the past. Can you explain that? I mean, I definitely believe that the universe tends towards entropy, sure, and Ithink that we are de-volving biologically (thanks M. for pointing that out in an aquarium many years ago citing the example of bad eyesight)...but I don't understand this idea of a noble past. At all. Unless somehow you've conflated those ideas all into one big idea.
4) I don't understand what you're saying about the 17th Amendment. I feel like what you said is exactly the opposite of what it should say.
5) I think Roe v. Wade doesn't make any sense constitutionally (from what I've encountered)...and I don't think it is consistent with our system of law either. I would have probably tried to cram it into the 9th Amendment just to freak people out. So, yes, I am uneasy with Roe. But I'm even more uneasy with the gleeful and zealous willingness for democratic majorities to divest the fundamental rights of others, especially under the banner of religion. (In case you're about to try and exploit an inconsistency, I do hold the right to self-determination to be more fundamental than the right to property. And I believe that the social compact/contract of forming government is a relinquishment of certain property rights, like taxation, whereas I don't believe that the compact/contract gives up the right of self-determination.)
5) As for your baseball/free market comment, you must be just trying to re-ignite that battle for shits and giggles, because you can't actually believe what you wrote. I'm tempted to respond with hysterical left commentary about how you're holding baseball as more sacred than human dignity etc., but instead I'm just going to ask you what you mean be "free markets."
If the question is too open, maybe distinguish your conception of "free markets" from "anarchy"...and we'll go from there.
Finally, I'd like to note that you recused yourself from one of the most critical beliefs I put up there, that I personally think has the greatest implications for your own beliefs...and serves as one of the primary reasons I reject certain categories of conservatism and libertarianism. Nice job.
Ok. that's enough.
OK, so a lawyer in my office died at his desk last night, so I got some other stuff to deal with. Let me get back to you tomorrow during class.
In an effort to make this conversation a bit less unweildy, I'll focus on on one of the issues we've raised, the Seventeenth Amendment:
The original Constitutional provision called for election of state senators by the people of the state. Those same state senators would then elect the two persons who would serve in the Senate. The Fathers thought that Senators elected by the state senators would be very responsive to state desires, rather than legislative and executive pressure. Roger Sherman wrote in a letter to John Adams: "The senators, being . . . dependent on [state legislatures] for reelection, will be vigilant in supporting their rights against infringement by the legislative or executive of the United States."
Furthermore, there was a fear that the Court would not protect the rights of the states “It would never be in the self-interest of the Court to strike down federal laws trenching on the inviolable and residuary sovereignty of the states, because every extension of power of the general legislature, as well as of the judicial powers, will increase the powers of the courts.”
There was a distinct advantage to having Senators elected in a different manner than Representatives. In the words of Madison in Federalist #51, "In republican government, the legislative authority, necessarily predominate. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions and their common dependencies on the society, will admit." The different manner of elections led to a greater system of checks and balances, limiting the role of special interests in the Legislature. It was incredibly difficult to control both houses at the same time on the same issue. Madison in support of true bicameralism in Federalist No. 10 stated "Before taking effect, legislation would have to be ratified by two independent power sources: the people's representatives in the House and the state legislatures' agents in the Senate."
By repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, there would be a restoration of both federalism and bicameralism. There are other advantages as well. Campaign spending would decrease dramatically. There would be no benefit to spending tons of money, since it is the state senators who do the selecting. One would not need to be rich to be a Senator. Direct elections have increased the role of special interests in influencing the process. Since special interests would have to influence mass amounts of state senators, who would then elect the Senator, in all fifty states, or at least a majority of them, it becomes a difficult if not impossible task, for special interests to carry the weight they carry now. Furthermore, in the words of Elbridge Gerry “The people are uninformed, and could easily be misled by a few designing men.”
“Instead of senators deliberating and representing the interests of their states, they are now a clone of the House of Representatives. This is a serious flaw in our system of checks and balances. The founders got it right; we are a republic, not a democracy. We are a collection of sovereign states which voluntarily delegated certain of their powers to a central government. That fact is too often forgotten, at our peril.” Junius W. Peake
I close, since class is basically over. Hope this clarifies my ideas, in brief, on the 17th Amendment.
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