> Carter:
>> Terry Drinkard:
>>> Carter:
>Wow, I'm glad to see my strong opinions have an audience!
Hi Carter!
>>>The founding fathers believed as I do that people are born with "natural rights". You don't earn them.
>>More's the pity. Nor do they come with balancing responsibilities, the one gaping hole in the US constitution.
>Actually they do come with responsibilities. Personal responsibility.
Please cite the article in the US Constitution where those personal responsibilities are outlined.
>I don't see it as a hole in the US constitution. The way I see the
problem is that people/governments don't respect each others rights. Governments exist to protect our rights. We don't exist to
serve the government.
The goverment exists, at least in part, to keep us all from killing one another. Without that fundamental functionality, we don’t have a government. This is fundamental because people in general do NOT respect the rights of other people. We, as human beings, require laws and the force necessary to enforce those laws in order to live peacably with one another. Don’t agree? Cite one single place in the world where one can live peacably that has no government. I’ll save you the effort. There are none. Even the hunter-gatherer tribes found in Borneo and New Guinea have a huge murder rate (from memory about 1/3 of all male mortality was violent murder).
A government can be described, at least in part, by a sets of rights. However, this would be a very high level description. It would be impossible to construct an actual effective government with nothing the rights of the citizens to work from. We need more (lots, actually).
From a systems design point of view, each force should have a counter-balancing force or forces. In the realm of human government, the classic pairing is rights with responsibilities. In the US Constitution, there is no such pairing. Even in business, Chief Executive Officers have fiduciary responsibilities to balance out their managerial rights. This is simply good sense.
[...]
>We may well incarcerate too many people. But you should check your figures. There are about 2 million prisoners in the US. With a
population of well over 200 million, that comes out to less than 1% of the population in jail. What was that about beer?
Depends on how you do your statistics. Up to 25% of some demographics are currently incarcerated or have been recently incarcerated. Check the stats on black males. Is this right? By right, I mean is it morally and ethically acceptable?
>Maybe my definition of murder isn't clear. What I mean by murder is "unjust killing" Kinda like Hilter murdering millions of Jews.
Your definition of murder is fine, it’s your definition of “right” that appears a bit murky to me.
>>It isn't "True". It's just one way of looking at the world, no better or worse than others, simply useful in the proper context.
>Certainly you have to admit that some philosophies are better than others. Application of theory which yields results can be compared.
Better at what? Based on what criteria? What results are we trying to maximize? What are we tring to minimize? Unless and until we can clearly express what we want, we can’t evaluate much of anything. That caveat said, I do agree that some forms of government (the palpable product of a political philosophy) are better suited to producing some results than others. Usually.
>>>The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany didn't believe in natural rights, with predictable results.
>>Neither do the English. Your point?
>All of the English? Some of them? The English government?
My point is that the English (well, Great Britain’s) constitution does not reflect a strong Rousseau influence, as does the US’. In fact, the Brits don’t even have a single document one can label as their constitution. Different tradition. To the best of my recollection, no one other than the Boers have accused the Brits of attempted genocide.
My point is that a good, decent, just government does not require a strong infusion of Rousseau, or “natural” rights.
>My point is that if governments or societies do not respect other people's rights very bad things can happen.
Irrespective of the nominal form of the government. I agree completely. Moreover, I would add if the traditions and moral code of the society are violated, bad things can also happen.
>>True, he was a libertarian. That does not presuppose a belief in "natural" rights.
>Actually it does. You should read up on libertarianism.
I tutor my sister the lawyer in Political Philosophy (I know, I’m a ringer in a number of areas). A belief in Rousseau’s “natural rights” is not a fundmental basis of libertarianism so far as I am aware. Libertarianism is derived from anarchism, popular in the 19th Century. Bukunin, et al. Libertarians, by and large, do not recognize the need for a state, much less a strong state. Rousseau would spin in his grave if he knew people were attributing such thoughts to him. Rousseau’s political philosophy dealt with the shift from monarchy to democracy, not with a shift from statist to non-statist.
To be clear, I am attributing the concept of “natural” rights to Rousseau (I could be wrong, perhaps it was Locke Carter, I'll have to look it up). That, of course, does not mean someone else cannot steal that concept and twist it to suit their need. Historically, “natural” rights have been used to justify democracy over monarchy. That is, the right to govern is derived from those governed. Legitimacy is the issue. To the best of my understanding, libertarians see no government as legitimate. And a strong government? Heaven forfend!
Read Heinlein for examples of libertarian attitudes!
>Have you seen the computer-animated Starship Troopers series? It's
awesome! IMHO
Is that a TV thing? I don’t have TV here. Oodles of movies (DVD and VHS, thank you very much), but no network TV. I have a friend who tapes Sailor Moon and Gundam Wing for me, but that’s as close as I get.
This is a rather long post, I know. Moreover, I don’t really expect anyone to read it all the way through. Heck, I wouldn’t.
Still, this brings us full circle back to the morality of war and war simulations.
What is the purpose of war today? At least two-fold, in my opinion. One is the classic function of the extension of foreign-policy, which is itself an extension of internal politics, which again, is an extension of economics. We might describe that as the aggressive part of the dual function of war.
Second is the function of ensuring the survival of the state. We might describe that as the defensive function. As I mentioned above, there is no area in the world wherein one can live peacably without a state, a government of some form. We can argue over the structure and actions of the state, but no one can argue intelligently for the absence of the state. In our world, it simply does not work. If it did work, it would almost certainly already be working.
Therefore, since the state is essential to our quality of life, it behooves us as citizens to have an effective and functional war-fighting capability. War-fighting is a complex task (as I explained to critics, the tasks of the infantry, while not technical, are, in fact, complex). Anything that can be done to improve the combat abilities of our war-fighting forces (within the bounds of moral and ethical behavior) is desirable because it better insures our survival as a culture and as a society. That makes training for war moral. In fact, that creates a moral imperative to train. One part of an effective training program is war simulations, therefore war games are moral. QED
Sorry for the long way ‘round, but I for one enjoyed the trip.
[ 07-17-2001: Message edited by: Terry Drinkard ]
