I understand that those who wish to intervene have the best of intentions. Indeed, I think that, when it comes to moral arguments, *THEY HAVE THE BETTER MORAL ARGUMENT*.
It's always more moral to argue for movement. It's always more moral to argue for action. Whenever you see the moral argument, it's always weighing the best possible outcome against the outcome of doing nothing which, in this case, sure as holy hell looked like a massacre of thousands.
The moral arguments arguing for non-intervention really ring hollow to me compared to the robust morality presented by the arguments for protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
But it's like chicken pox or hockey hair.
I've already been struck quite badly by the moral argument bug and my body now has quite a resistance to such arguments.
I'm stuck looking at what's likely to happen, what's likely to not happen, and what's likely to happen as soon as we stop making things not happen.
It's like prohibition, dude. You cannot use force to make people be better. We will quickly see that the culture of the Middle East created the Middle East as we know it rather than this idea that the Middle East as we know it created the culture.
Would that it were not so.
But, for what it's worth, I know that those who argue for intervention have the best of intentions and legitimately want to make the world a better place.
So we shouldn't intervene in Libya because we're not going to intervene in the Ivory Coast, Bahrain, or Saudi?
If we promised that we *WOULD* intervene in those three places, could we then intervene in Libya?
Imagine all of the lives we could save and all of the people who would finally be free of the shackles they wear!
(Of course the problem is that "DOING SOMETHING!" always has more moral weight in an argument than "none of my business"... because "AT LEAST WE TRIED!" is seen as a legitimate defense when everything that your critics said would happen eventually happens... and, praise Allah, it looks like Libya will not necessarily have everything the critics said would eventually happen happen. This will make it easier for the next guy to intervene even quicker.)
It strikes me that the marketing of Libya, if the vector we're on continues, will provide justification for those who support intervention rather than for those who support isolation.
Why, look at all the lives created or saved! Are you really putting a dollar value on THIS: (picture of smiling Libya boy hugging a blue-helmeted female soldier)?
Something’s sure playing havoc with our moral reasoning here, isn’t it?
Moral reasoning may be the problem.
Perhaps we ought to explore the upsides of callousness, selfishness, and indifference. (On an institutional level, I mean. On a personal level we can still be directly hooked into God's Thoughts.)
I admit to not being a fan of arguments of the form "you can't volunteer at this soup kitchen because you didn't volunteer at a different soup kitchen last week".
That said, I am less of a fan of arguments of the form "I cannot *NOT* volunteer at soup kitchens!" when one volunteers at a soup kitchen this week and one did not volunteer at a different soup kitchen last week.
I listened to it (on NPR!) on the way home from work (read it here ).
It was a good one.
It had sweeping rhetoric, addressed criticism, and he said "let me be clear", like, a million times.
The possibility exists that we got lucky in Libya. This will change the dynamic of a handful of arguments regarding international intervention.
Be prepared.
(Note: I still oppose intervention in Libya and think we need to withdraw from everywhere and go full non-interventionist. With that said, I acknowledge that if everything turns out very, very well for Libya (huge if), the moral argument will look to fit better in the hands of those who supported intervention than those who opposed. But I repeat myself.)
My nephew is exploring the phase where it's very important to him to know who is older than whom. Specifically, he's trying to figure out the dynamics for "who gets to tell whom what to do".
He knows that grown-ups can tell him what to do because they're older and he has somewhat more leeway in telling his little brother what to do than little brother does to him.
But there are also dynamics where police can tell mommy and daddy what to do and the president can tell the police what to do. The universe is a web of people telling other people what to do and it's very important to figure those threads out.
Who's older? Kadhaffi or Obama? We should be able to figure this stuff out before lunchtime.
My problem with past lives is that everyone I know who has had one was, like, cool in their past lives. They were this princess or that king or this other really important person but no one was ever "I was a eunich in some minor emperor's court who got an infection two days after the operation and died" or "abortion has existed for thousands of years, I've been aborted thrice" (this would have the added benefit of minimizing the damage that pro-lifers claim is done by abortion!) or "I was a vaguely below average drone in Egypt, I was a vaguely below average drone in China, I was a vaguely below average drone in Prussia, and now I am back, baby!"
Maybe only people who have past lives worth remembering are inspired to seek out their past lives though.
But we shouldn’t have contempt for those who raise such concerns in earnest, nor caricature how they are raised as just being cries of ‘WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??” or “PEOPLE ARE DYING!!!”
It depends on whether these arguments have a follow-up that hold that people who disagree do not, and please note this word as it is very important to the people who use these particular follow-up arguments, "care".
Once "caring" is brought up, we're in wacky world, dude.
No, when people put together an argument that consists of somewhat reasonable claims that somewhat logically lead to a somewhat reasonable conclusion...
THEN I feel obliged to answer said arguments.
And maybe that is because I am SOO AWESOME, as you point out... but there is also the problem of if we are not obliged to even answer argumenst that consist of somewhat reasonable claims that somewhat logically lead to a somewhat reasonable conclusion, when would we be obliged to answer them?
On “Quote for the day”
Andrew Sullivan is our Libya.
Should we intervene?
For the record, I'm against it.
"
And here I thought all of the Reagan comparisons were specious.
"
Dude, don't get me wrong.
I understand that those who wish to intervene have the best of intentions. Indeed, I think that, when it comes to moral arguments, *THEY HAVE THE BETTER MORAL ARGUMENT*.
It's always more moral to argue for movement. It's always more moral to argue for action. Whenever you see the moral argument, it's always weighing the best possible outcome against the outcome of doing nothing which, in this case, sure as holy hell looked like a massacre of thousands.
The moral arguments arguing for non-intervention really ring hollow to me compared to the robust morality presented by the arguments for protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
But it's like chicken pox or hockey hair.
I've already been struck quite badly by the moral argument bug and my body now has quite a resistance to such arguments.
I'm stuck looking at what's likely to happen, what's likely to not happen, and what's likely to happen as soon as we stop making things not happen.
It's like prohibition, dude. You cannot use force to make people be better. We will quickly see that the culture of the Middle East created the Middle East as we know it rather than this idea that the Middle East as we know it created the culture.
Would that it were not so.
But, for what it's worth, I know that those who argue for intervention have the best of intentions and legitimately want to make the world a better place.
On “After the Fact”
So we shouldn't intervene in Libya because we're not going to intervene in the Ivory Coast, Bahrain, or Saudi?
If we promised that we *WOULD* intervene in those three places, could we then intervene in Libya?
Imagine all of the lives we could save and all of the people who would finally be free of the shackles they wear!
(Of course the problem is that "DOING SOMETHING!" always has more moral weight in an argument than "none of my business"... because "AT LEAST WE TRIED!" is seen as a legitimate defense when everything that your critics said would happen eventually happens... and, praise Allah, it looks like Libya will not necessarily have everything the critics said would eventually happen happen. This will make it easier for the next guy to intervene even quicker.)
On “A reed in the wind”
It strikes me that the marketing of Libya, if the vector we're on continues, will provide justification for those who support intervention rather than for those who support isolation.
Why, look at all the lives created or saved! Are you really putting a dollar value on THIS: (picture of smiling Libya boy hugging a blue-helmeted female soldier)?
"
DOMA was Bubba. The State Constitutional Amendments were Dumbya's.
On “After the Fact”
Something’s sure playing havoc with our moral reasoning here, isn’t it?
Moral reasoning may be the problem.
Perhaps we ought to explore the upsides of callousness, selfishness, and indifference. (On an institutional level, I mean. On a personal level we can still be directly hooked into God's Thoughts.)
"
I admit to not being a fan of arguments of the form "you can't volunteer at this soup kitchen because you didn't volunteer at a different soup kitchen last week".
That said, I am less of a fan of arguments of the form "I cannot *NOT* volunteer at soup kitchens!" when one volunteers at a soup kitchen this week and one did not volunteer at a different soup kitchen last week.
On “A reed in the wind”
Dude, you don't have to tell *ME* that.
"
How 'bout that speech?
I listened to it (on NPR!) on the way home from work (read it here ).
It was a good one.
It had sweeping rhetoric, addressed criticism, and he said "let me be clear", like, a million times.
The possibility exists that we got lucky in Libya. This will change the dynamic of a handful of arguments regarding international intervention.
Be prepared.
(Note: I still oppose intervention in Libya and think we need to withdraw from everywhere and go full non-interventionist. With that said, I acknowledge that if everything turns out very, very well for Libya (huge if), the moral argument will look to fit better in the hands of those who supported intervention than those who opposed. But I repeat myself.)
On “No country for old dictators”
Bush knew.
"
My nephew is exploring the phase where it's very important to him to know who is older than whom. Specifically, he's trying to figure out the dynamics for "who gets to tell whom what to do".
He knows that grown-ups can tell him what to do because they're older and he has somewhat more leeway in telling his little brother what to do than little brother does to him.
But there are also dynamics where police can tell mommy and daddy what to do and the president can tell the police what to do. The universe is a web of people telling other people what to do and it's very important to figure those threads out.
Who's older? Kadhaffi or Obama? We should be able to figure this stuff out before lunchtime.
On “On Esoteric Writing”
Dude, that happened in 1976.
"
Scientology suffers from the midichlorian problem.
The more details you get about why the universe is the way it is, the more "what the hell?" you get.
"
My problem with past lives is that everyone I know who has had one was, like, cool in their past lives. They were this princess or that king or this other really important person but no one was ever "I was a eunich in some minor emperor's court who got an infection two days after the operation and died" or "abortion has existed for thousands of years, I've been aborted thrice" (this would have the added benefit of minimizing the damage that pro-lifers claim is done by abortion!) or "I was a vaguely below average drone in Egypt, I was a vaguely below average drone in China, I was a vaguely below average drone in Prussia, and now I am back, baby!"
Maybe only people who have past lives worth remembering are inspired to seek out their past lives though.
Sure.
On “No country for old dictators”
Erm, this was originally intended to be a post saying "welcome back, you were missed".
"
Yeah... but after Assad sees what we do to Khadaffi, he'll figure out something.
We'll sicken of the bullshit before they sicken of being in charge of killing freedom fighters.
"
Reports that we’ve saved 100,000 lives there strike me as no better than propaganda.
We should have said "created or saved".
On “The bad logic of intervention in Libya”
But we shouldn’t have contempt for those who raise such concerns in earnest, nor caricature how they are raised as just being cries of ‘WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??” or “PEOPLE ARE DYING!!!”
It depends on whether these arguments have a follow-up that hold that people who disagree do not, and please note this word as it is very important to the people who use these particular follow-up arguments, "care".
Once "caring" is brought up, we're in wacky world, dude.
"
Beef Wellington!
Sadly, "William, Prince of Orange" is not enough to get us to say that The Battle of Waterloo provides us with ideas for an excellent date night.
Hey, I'm not saying that the stuff that was true in 1200 is true today. Some of it obviously isn't.
But there is stuff that was true then that remains true. *THAT* is the meaty stuff, if'n you ask me.
"
We're still naming food after mass murderers, for example.
There is stuff that was true in 4400BC that is true today.
There is stuff that is "true" today that was not "true" then. There is stuff that was "true" then that is not "true" today.
It seems to me that if there is an underlying moral fabric, it's universal enough to experience without iPhones.
"
I've been chewing on a response to this all day...
Here's an essay that does a better job than I could probably do.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/libya-limited-government-and-imperfect-duties/
"
Is morality similar to science, then?
As time goes on and we get better and better at it, our morality better reflects the truth of the universe?
Why, the 20th Century must have been the most moral Century yet!
"
No, when people put together an argument that consists of somewhat reasonable claims that somewhat logically lead to a somewhat reasonable conclusion...
THEN I feel obliged to answer said arguments.
And maybe that is because I am SOO AWESOME, as you point out... but there is also the problem of if we are not obliged to even answer argumenst that consist of somewhat reasonable claims that somewhat logically lead to a somewhat reasonable conclusion, when would we be obliged to answer them?
"
Coitenly!
And if it's appropriate there, it's appropriate here.
And if I felt obliged to answer such questions there, I don't see why others wouldn't be obliged to answer such questions here.
Is it because they don't like the questions?