Commenter Archive

I mean too many to have a sense of what's easy to understand. I use fairly complex, graduate level math in my work and even thinking about thinking about GR geometry makes my head hurt.

Anyone who thinks General Relativity is easy to understand has taken way too many math courses (well beyond what's needed for econ), or doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.

I'll never forget Alexander Hamilton's version of Shrodinger's Cat, or Madison's brilliant essays on the halting problem.

Can you point to a time when science, either in its modern form or in its more general form as it was practiced before Bacon or Kepler or Galileo, say, was not political?

The fact is, politics will always infect science, and science will always be used for political ends, because science is a human social institution, and politics uses any ammunition it can get. Neither directions of influence is an indictment of science, however.

The more I read you, Bob, the more you look like a good ol' pragmatist, adopting the positions you adopt to avoid the implications you perceive in alternative views, and which you find unacceptable for practical purposes. You have more in common with those who adhere to a vulgar scientism than you think.

That's a really interesting view of history, Bob.

Alternatively, oh Bob, you say the darndest things.

I, personally, would not be proud of killing people or participating in the killing of people, even if I believed it was for a just cause (like stopping the Nazis, Fascists, and Imperial Japanese). But I don’t think it’s a moral blind spot if people are proud of their work in service of a just cause, as long as they fought as humanly as it is possible to do when killing other human beings.
I’ve already made my points about the motivations of Confederate soldiers, which no one has disputed (save Bob saying that I’m a product of the public education system, which I believe he considers to be a counterargument), so I won’t get back on that little hobby horse of mine, but I will say this: the Union Army fought “total war”, to a greater or lesser extent, in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Mississippi (Tennessee, which was full of Unionists, was fairly free of destruction not caused by the fighting itself), but I don’t see that how it was much different from any other major war of that century, or any past century, in which one army invades the territory of another which is occupied by a civilian population loyal to the enemy of the invader. Again, I wouldn’t be proud of it, but it’s what war is. There were truly egregious instances, to be sure, but for the most part the Union fought like an invading army (and the Confederates like a desperate one, which means they weren’t always so great to their own civilian population). I, personally, wouldn’t be proud of serving, even though I consider the results of the Union victory to be highly just, but I don’t think it’s a moral failing in someone who is proud of service that results in such an outcome simply because in some cases some soldiers on their side went beyond the boundaries of the ordinary conduct of war, or even because some generals told some soldiers to do so (as happened in South Carolina, e.g.).

You seem to be confusing what an army or nation is fighting for and how it fights. The fact is, in any war, every side will commit highly immoral acts. It’s part of war, and one of the many reasons why war itself is immoral and should therefore be undertaken only when all other alternatives have been exhausted. But if one is proud to have helped defeat the Nazis, Fascists, or Imperial Japanese, that doesn’t seem like much of a moral blind spot, unless one participated in such acts like the fire-bombing of civilians or killing of unarmed POWs. Again, if one is proud of that service, then one certainly has a moral blind spot.

That is an incredible letter.

I’m curious – if it was immoral to be a Confederate soldier (the victors always write the history books)… what about those Union soldiers who served under Sherman? Or to go a step further, what about the men and women who served in the same Army that fire-bombed Dresden?

I'm not sure what you know or don't know about Sherman, but their actions once they crossed the Savannah were immoral, to be sure, and being proud of that service in South Carolina would be a moral blindspot. In Georgia, the atrocities were minimal and generally committed by rogue units, whereas in South Carolina there was an organized plundering and widespread pointless destruction (Union soldiers weren’t too fond of South Carolina). I don’t consider what Sherman did in Georgia any more immoral than war generally. The fire-bombing of Dresden, or Tokyo, and perhaps even dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would also constitute moral blind spots for anyone who was proud of participating in them (it’s interesting to watch McNamara deal with the conflicts between the moral and economic calculus of these acts in Fog of War).

Yeah, Congressmen have apologized because they said Rush is not a thinker, which he's not. I don't know about you, but that makes me worry more about Rush. If speaking the truth, and it can't be said enough that it is the truth, is so dangerous because an individual wields enough influence to make it dangerous, that's much more frightening than bloggers who had some influence on Howard Dean voters in 2004.

The fact is that before the American Revolution, there was a significant number of people who thought slavery to be a moral abomination, and by the time of the Civil War, when much of the civilized world had already abolished slavery, there was a huge abolitionist movement in the U.S. Because southerners viewed slavery as a "noble institution" doesn't mean that we can't see them through better eyes, because better eyes existed then. And plenty of them!

The "as they understood themselves" nonsense is a cop-out. There is no one way that people understand themselves at a given time. Bolsheviks (and their opponents, let's be fair) viewed their slaughtering of any and all opposion, or even potential opposition, in 1918, as a necessity. Do you think it's wrong to judge the Bolsheviks by our standards? And what's to stop us from applying this pernicious view to today's world? I suspect, in fact I'm quite sure, that you don't look at radical Islam and judge the rightness or wrongness of suicide bombing by considering how radical Muslims "understand themselves." But that is how they view themselves? In your relativism lies the route to the justification of every irrational and inhuman prejudice, every sort of oppression, because they are merely products of the way people view themselves.

So whose "understanding of themselves" do we choose when thinking about the Civil War and slavery? I'm going to go with the side that respected human dignity. I suppose you can pick whichever side you please, just don't pretend that in doing so you've selected the only, or even the most historically accurate position.

Tom, you remind me of the Black Knight. You will declare victory no matter how few limbs you have left.

Tom, I was merely repeating a previous critique: you never say anything or argue for a position, you just quote people and then say anyone who disagrees with you is biased. If that's what constitutes getting my ass kicked by you, then I certainly am.

Bob, since I actually presented several arguments, from different perspectives, arguing the same thing (and it's not the view of today only, it was a common view then as well), I'm not sure you're doing anything more than rationalizing your own indefensible position by convincing yourself I, not you (or Tom), am the one who is biased.

I know this is well-trodden territory, but the assertion that being proud of fighting for the Confederacy is not a moral blind spot is absurd. Sure, as Bob says, many southerners (particularly after 1862) fought because "they were down here," but that's just the immediate cause. It always surprises me that someone like Bob, who's always talking about underlying causes, focuses only on the immediate cause here, but I suspect he has ulterior motives.

Even if we look only at the immediate cause (for some, not all Confederate soldiers), the argument that it was not a moral failing falls apart quite quickly. For example, there were certainly many who volunteered or were conscripted into the Heer in 1944 or '45 who fought because they, the Russians and the Americans-British-Canadian-French-Polish were moving in on Germany or actually on German soil. Were they not still fighting for the army of the Nazi State? Should they be proud of that fact?

What's more, still sticking with the immediate cause (and accepting that it was the main one) it ignores the fact that they still had a choice. By some estimates more than 100,000 southerners fought in the Union army. These peoples' homes and families were equally threatened (in some cases, more so, as many were from states like Tennessee and Virginia where most of the fighting took place), but they made a choice not to fight for the Confederacy. And it was a difficult choice, but the right choices often are.

But the immediate cause was not the only cause, or the primary cause, of the war. They were down here because the southern states seceded, and made it clear that violence was the only way to restore the Union, short of accepting the South's position on the main issue that resulted in secession: a guarantee that slavery could still exist in the South. And most southerners supported secession, and most favored states rights, which at the time meant slavery.

And it's clear that many, many soldiers considered themselves to be fighting for states rights (read just about any war memoir by southern foot soldiers -- not officers, enlisted and noncoms). The culture of the Confederate Army promoted states rights, in much the way that every army promotes a cause (fighting terrorism, say, even in Iraq). And states rights meant slavery.

By the way, it's equally absurd to say "we see slavery as wrong now, but times were different then." There was a large abolitionist movement by the time of the Civil War, and plenty of people saw slavery as a moral evil.

BlaiseP, Plato had plenty of moral blindspots. Slavery? Infanticide?

You consider it an argument? Funny, I think of it as a clarification.

Granted, I persist in the cause of Raiders hatred because I find Raiders fans so insipid.

Bob, do you really believe global warming was Gore's idea, or do you just need bogiemen to make you feel better about your, own world-view?

I meant you and your hatred of "Algore" (who I met once, when I was in Youth Legislature).

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid," eh Bob?

2.4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_library#Funding_problems

It appears the funding is mostly public, which is a problem when local and state governments are as cash-strapped as they are now.

What are you expecting to attract to your boat?

The proper maxim has to take into account circumstances.

You're not going to have a very good categorical imperative that way!

That's a really interesting way of viewing Kant.

It’s interesting that most of the things you mention: cultural commonalities, economic interdependence, and military/diplomatic alliances (usually against a common foe) are all things that have been in place to a greater or lesser extent in Europe since, well, the fall of Rome. Those things are Europe, and except for the last 65 years, they’ve produced a continent that has been at war pretty much constantly, and which in the last century has done its level best to destroy itself twice. Hell, in a sense it was the cultural commonalities, economic interdependence, and military/diplomatic alliances that caused World War I.

So there must be some other explanation, and I suspect that Jason’s right, the democracy bit plays the biggest role, though I don’t think we should underestimate the cultural memory of the two World Wars that you mention, which certainly make the prospect of wars at home or near home seem significantly less appetizing to Europeans, nor should we neglect the fact that having a super power exerting influence over and playing international liaison to Europe for several decades makes infighting less likely. Conflict of Europe was always about the balance of power, both at home and in distant colonies. I suspect, though it’s really just a guess, that Europe would have seen a war or two since 1945 if the U.S. hadn’t been around to make sure that the balance of power looked like this: U.S. then everybody else.

That said, since the U.S. has a different level and type of influence in many places outside of Europe, and since some of those places are relatively new to democracy, have long-standing cultural and ethnic conflicts that aren’t going to go away just because people can vote, and in at least many cases haven’t seen a world-destroying war at home in living memory, I don’t know that the theory will hold up outside of Europe and perhaps Eastern Asia.

Minogue’s worries about “the advancing of homosexuality as an equally valid sexual option to heterosexuality” makes at least one assumption that is contradicted by the empirical evidence: that homosexuality is entirely or at least primarily a personal choice (it also assumes that gay people don’t reproduce, which is an empirically false assumption). That is, it assumes that it is an “option” which people can consider (even if they do so unconsciously), and towards which they can be influenced by those who are “advancing” it as an equally valid one.

This may not have needed to be pointed out, but I wanted to put it out there anyway. Since much of the conservative fear of homosexuality rests on their belief that the continued and even increased visible presence of gay people in society will influence others (particularly their children) to become gay, it can’t hurt to continually point out that, while it wouldn’t be the end of the world if their kids did end up being gay, it’s unlikely that any amount of gay pride parades, watching Bravo and HGTV, and receiving invitations for their cousin’s gay wedding is going to influence their sexual orientation, even if those things (OK, the first and the last at least) do advance homosexuality as equally valid.