Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojkt2007 – Michael Vick, a star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, formally pleads guilty before a Richmond, VA, judge to a federal felony charge related to running a dog fighting ring. That December, the 27-year-old Vick, once the highest-paid player in the NFL, was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison.
1984 – In an effort to spark new interest in the space shuttle program, NASA began discussions on including private citizens in the space program. On August 27, 1984, President Reagan announced the official formation of the Teacher in Space Project. More than 11,000 teachers applied to be considered for the program.
By June 0f 1985, NASA had chosen 114 semifinalists to be the first teacher in space. This selection included two teachers from each state. Later, a review panel chosen by NASA and the Council of Chief State School Officers selected 10 finalists. On July 18, 1985, NASA chose Christa McAuliffe as the flight candidate for the program and Barbara R. Morgan as her alternate.
After the challenger accident, NASA decided to cancel the Teacher in Space Project. They also cancelled similar programs, such as an upcoming Journalist in Space program.
1952 – the New York Times front page contained three stories suggesting the impact of the Red Scare on the upcoming election. In the first story, the Republican-dominated Senate Internal Security Subcommittee released a report charging that the Radio Writers Guild was dominated by a small number of communists.
The second front-page story was a report that the American Legion was demanding, for the third year in a row, that President Harry S. Truman dismiss Secretary of State Dean Acheson for his lack of vigor in dealing with the communist threat. The Legion report declared that the Department of State was in desperate need of “God-fearing Americans” who had the “intestinal fortitude not to be political puppets.” The organization demanded a quick and victorious settlement of the Korean War, even if this meant expanding the war into China.
The third story provided a counter of sorts to the previous two stories. It reported a speech by Democratic nominee for president Governor Adlai E. Stevenson, in which he strongly criticized those who used “patriotism” as a weapon against their political opponents. In an obvious slap at the Senate Subcommittee and others, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, Stevenson repeated the words of the writer Dr. Samuel Johnson: “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
The three related stories from the front page of the Times indicated just how deeply the Red Scare had penetrated American society. Accusations about communists in the film, radio, and television industries, in the Department of State and the U.S. Army, in all walks of American life, had filled the newspapers and airwaves for years. By 1952, many Americans were convinced that communists were at work in the United States and must be rooted out and hunted down.
1883 – The volcanic island of Krakatoa near Indonesia erupts on this day in 1883, killing thousands in one of the worst geologic disasters of modern times.
The beginning of the amazing events at Krakatoa in 1883 date to May 20 when there were initial rumblings and venting from the volcano, which had been dormant for about 200 years. Over the next three months, there were regular small blasts from Krakatoa out of three vents. On August 11, ash started spewing from the small mountain. Eruptions got progressively stronger until August 26, when the catastrophe began.
At noon, the volcano sent an ash cloud 20 miles into the air and tremors triggered several tsunamis. This turned out to be just a small indication, however, of what would follow the next day. For four-and-a-half hours beginning at 5:30 a.m. on August 27, there were four major and incredibly powerful eruptions. The last of these made the loudest sound ever recorded on the planet. It could be heard as far away as central Australia and the island of Rodrigues, 3,000 miles from Krakatoa. The air waves created by the eruption were detected at points all over the earth.
Filed under: Football, This Day in History | Tagged: NASA, Red Scare |
All Things in Moderation 
Nova, our work here is done:
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Megan McArdle offers a different theory Re College Costs than Juicebox.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/why-do-education-and-health-care-cost-so-much-.html
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Excellent, JNC. everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.
also .. anyone else see Milbank’s column on Gen X this past weekend?
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There’s a bigger problem with Ezra’s theory. If he was right about the whole inelastic nature being the cost driver, then it should have been that way for decades. The growth in medical and education cost inflation however seems to track with increased government intervention and subsidies.
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Ezra’s attempt to address the argument falls short:
Here’s the corrected version of his observation:
“The subsidies exist because consumers — also known as “voters” — are desperate to get medical care when they need it and secure quality educations for their kids and get someone else to pay for it.“
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I saw Milbank’s piece. I thought it was a pathetic case of boomer envy. Someone should give him an honorary AARP card.
For myself, I’ll be just as happy when the boomers and their cultural baggage are gone from the scene, with present company excepted of course.
This is a more interesting take: Can slackers have a mid life crisis?
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/11/generation_x_gets_really_old_how_do_slackers_have_a_midlife_crisis/
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Salon takes on positive vs negative rights.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/27/the_right_is_wrong_about_rights/
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and they need someone else to pay for it, because we’ve over regulated and jacked up the price of admission. be it for education or medical care.
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jnc
with present company excepted of course
Oh sure………………….I think my kids will miss me though. I tried to check out last year (twice) but the clumsy medical profession bailed me out…………haha
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well, the the comments on that salon article are fun:
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lmsinca, unless I’ve missed it, you haven’t posted about how only 1960’s music has any depth, everything today is worse than when your generation was in it’s prime, and kids today don’t measure up to the activism of your generation.
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Also, this is the Kevin Drum piece you were referencing, correct?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/debt-ceiling-mid-october
This is a good thing:
“If mid-October really is the drop-dead date, it means that budget negotiations in late September and debt ceiling negotiations in early October pretty much run right into each other. ”
The FY2014 CR (because there’s no way a regular budget and the associated appropriation bills will be passed in time, if at all) should include a raise in the debt ceiling sufficient to fund the CR itself. It really should be one big negotiation.
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They also cancelled similar programs, such as an upcoming Journalist in Space program.
But by popular demand that quadrupled the slots for the Lawyers In Space program.
Ba-dump.
I’ll be here all week. Tip your waitress. Try the veal.
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jnc, I think every generation has both good and bad characteristics. I linked the Milbank piece on Sat but also linked a counter argument from Booman, who’s also a millennial.
What you said about Boomer envy was pretty funny though. It’s interesting because our son is 10 years older than our youngest daughter and it’s close to a generational difference just in that amount of time. I did love our music but being arrested twice for protesting the draft wasn’t a particularly high moment in my life………..lol
I happened to follow the draft conversation at the PL, yesterday, was it? Very interesting opinions.
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To hark back to a previous topic, on the last thread when I made my picky consumer comment, I was trying to point out that–by being a picky consumer–I was trying to nudge the market towards going for quality over quantity. That seems inherently un-Libertarian to me, since Libertarians are for whatever the market will bear. Caveat emptor!.
yello:
It seems to me that it isn’t the smoke up around the top of the 12-foot ladder and 6-foot reach that’ll get you. . . maybe you should just re-position the smoke detector?
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Yep that’s the Kevin Drum piece, it was some of his rhetoric about “hostage-takers” etc. I didn’t want to link. Can’t upset the apple cart.
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Steve Benen is exactly right here:
“When ‘consultation’ replaces ‘authorization’
By Steve Benen
–
Tue Aug 27, 2013 8:45 AM EDT”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/27/20212561-when-consultation-replaces-authorization?lite
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i have my smoke detectors right above the door frames. they also are attached to the security system, so if they alert, it trips the alarm with the security company.
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“Michigoose, on August 27, 2013 at 9:34 am said:
To hark back to a previous topic, on the last thread when I made my picky consumer comment, I was trying to point out that–by being a picky consumer–I was trying to nudge the market towards going for quality over quantity. That seems inherently un-Libertarian to me, since Libertarians are for whatever the market will bear. Caveat emptor!.”
You are missing the point.The market will ultimately balance quality with quantity and price. The point of preferring the market over central planning is the premise that millions of people “voting” with their dollars is a better mechanism than one person or a group of experts making a decision for everyone.
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“lmsinca, on August 27, 2013 at 9:35 am said:
…
Can’t upset the apple cart.”
Sure you can. Just state that you tipped that cart over, you meant to do it, and you aren’t apologizing for it because it was in the way and needed to be tipped over.
🙂
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jnc
Sure you can
We’ll see, I’m one of those “people pleasers” remember……………..the curse of my existence. Perhaps I’ll reconsider but then I won’t be so popular……………. 😉
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I’m one of those “people pleasers” remember……………..the curse of my existence. Perhaps I’ll reconsider but then I won’t be so popular
I quit trying to be a people pleaser two years ago when I walked out and got a divorce, and it has worked pretty well for me. Being honest, rather than mincing words, has made me a happier person and has worked better for people around me.
FWIW.
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“Perhaps I’ll reconsider but then I won’t be so popular…”
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Hah, I’ve tried to change but you know what they say about old people. Thanks for all the advice though…………….lol
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Xanthro, in the comments of the Salon article, was fascinating.
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Mcwing:
Xanthro, in the comments of the Salon article, was fascinating.
The trouble with the Salon piece in general, and with the comments that followed, is that no one bothered to define what they mean by the term “right”. Everyone assumes that they are talking about the same concept, and are just arguing about examples to which the concept applies. But they aren’t, which would become clear if anyone bothered to define the term. What would also become clear is that the notion of “positive” rights is incoherent.
Also, the author conflates legal rights with positive rights. They are not the same thing. The right to access the judicial system and the right to police protection are legal rights, not examples of positive rights. Of course, laws can be written to protect so-called positive rights, just as laws can be written to protect negative rights. But the existence of a legal right does not imply the existence of either a positive right or a negative right.
As it happens, the rights identified by the author in the 4th thru the 8th amendment are not, as he claims, “positive” rights at all, but are in fact legal rights designed to protect the negative rights of citizens from encroachment by the government itself. They define what the government cannot do to citizens, just as laws prohibiting, say, murder or theft are laws defining what citizens cannot do to other citizens.
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The trouble with the Salon piece in general, and with the comments that followed, is that no one bothered to define what they mean by the term “right”.
I am glad this problem is universal and not limited to just the ATiM blog.
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The United States could hit Syria with three days of missile strikes, perhaps beginning Thursday, in an attack meant more to send a message to the Syrian regime than to cripple its military, senior U.S. officials told NBC News.
The disclosure added to a growing drumbeat around the world for military action against Syria, believed to have used chemical weapons in recent days against scores of civilians and rebels who have been fighting the government for two years.
In three days of strikes, the Pentagon could assess the effectiveness of the first wave and target what was missed in further rounds, the senior officials said.
Secretary of State John Kerry says the use of chemical weapons in Syria is “undeniable” and that the U.S. is considering how to respond. Watch his entire statement
Underscoring the urgency facing world leaders, the British prime minister called Parliament back from vacation and said it would take a vote Thursday on action, and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the American military was “ready to go.”
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/27/20209022-military-strikes-on-syria-as-early-as-thursday-us-officials-say
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Tweet of the Day:
@jimantle: If the president bombs it, it isn’t illegal.
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“The market will ultimately balance quality with quantity and price. The point of preferring the market over central planning is the premise that millions of people “voting” with their dollars is a better mechanism than one person or a group of experts making a decision for everyone.”
I’ve often wondered … do people really trust the USDA to inspect meat? seems like it really is caveat emptor with a few token inspections.
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Ok, Buzzfeed did come up w/ something useful.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gabbynoone/18-everyday-products-youve-been-using-wrong?s=mobile
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Troll, I think that link might have been life changing. But you’ll be happy to know that I have been using the appropriate plunger.
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“The right to access the judicial system and the right to police protection are legal rights, not examples of positive rights. ”
aka process” rights, IIRC
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Scott, I give the Salon article points for at least acknowledging this:
“If there really are universal human rights, they will be the same 200 years from now as they were 200 years ago. ”
That’s more than most.
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jnc:
That’s more than most.
Yes, indeed. Good point.
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Scott, good point. Many find agreeing on definitions prior to debate incomprehensible as everybody *knows* what “rights” are.
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McWing:
Many find agreeing on definitions prior to debate incomprehensible as everybody *knows* what “rights” are.
Some are even contemptuous of the idea.
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Some are even contemptuous of the idea.
Some are contemptuous of defining rights so narrowly as to make the word meaningless. Of course the contrary is also true.
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yello:
Some are contemptuous of defining rights so narrowly as to make the word meaningless.
I don’t think you have ever offered a definition of the term, narrow or broad. And you have routinely dismissed requests that you do so, and not only with the term “rights”. You are contemptuous of defining terms almost as a matter of pride. So much so that, pretty much any time a matter of definitions arises here, even if no one has asked you to define anything, you throw out some snark about it. As you just did.
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/let-me-explain-why-miley-cyrus-vma-performance-was,33632/
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The Onion quit being satire a long time ago.
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pretty much any time a matter of definitions arises here
Because we all know that you, and you alone, are the only one ever allowed to define things here on ATiM, Scott. It’s that simple.
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Michi, that’s BS.
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OK, McWing, find an example of a time here when someone else defined a term and Scott let the definition stand unchallenged.
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What’s wrong with that! Isn’t clarity preferable to agreement? Why should you agree to a term you don’t actually agree with ?
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I find the entire libertarian definition of rights from first principles of liberty and non-coercion tedious and unnecessarily arbitrary. The ‘natural’ negative right to life is meaningless with out the accompanying positive rights to food, shelter, and health care. This is why Rand Paul got tripped up so easily in that interview.
As we have discussed here endlessly there is no liberty except as defined by what is needed protect the liberty of others. There is no ‘right’ to pollute. All rights exist only in opposition to the responsibility of respecting the rights of others.
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yello:
The ‘natural’ negative right to life is meaningless with out the accompanying positive rights to food, shelter, and health care.
What do you mean by the term “right”? Again, you want to throw this term around without defining what it is you mean.
In my understanding, a right is the moral sanction on individual action (or inaction). Within this understanding, the negative right to life is perfectly meaningful, in that it sanctions an individual’s actions taken in pursuit of securing his own life. It sanctions his pursuit of food, shelter, and health care, within the confines of the equal rights of all other people. It does not, indeed cannot (at least coherently), guarantee him food, shelter, and health care at the expense of the equal rights of other people. Because if it did, it would render the notion that other people have equal rights to be utterly incoherent.
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“The ‘natural’ negative right to life is meaningless with out the accompanying positive rights to food, shelter, and health care.”
No it’s not. You are on your own isn’t the same as you can be killed at will by the state.
The converse problem is the need of all progressives to crouch policy arguments as “rights” as a way of stacking the deck.
There’s a reason FDR appropriated the “right’s language of Locke and others in his Four Freedom’s speech and it wasn’t to help clarify the issue.
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right. Not giving is taking.
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Here is the Rand Paul quote in question from a puff piece in National Review
He also falls back on the Forced Commerce Is Slavery trope. As if under single payer medical care there will be dungeon of enslaved neurosurgeons only let out of their shackles long enough to separate conjoined twins before being sent back with just a bowl of gruel.
So just what is the difference between an obligation and a right?
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positive rights are simply incompatible with any idea of freedom or liberty.
you may be well fed, housed and clothed under a positive rights system, but you certainly aren’t free. you’re akin to my dog. well kept and a pet.
“Those who sought to retain some elements of the political outlook that Locke’s theory had overthrown—namely, the view that people are subjects of the state (in fact, belong to the state)—found a way to expropriate and exploit the concept of human rights to advance their reactionary position, just as they expropriated and exploited the concept of liberalism. (Yes, Virginia, Karl Marx was a reactionary!)
Riding on purloined prestige, they perverted the concept of individual rights at its root so that it came to mean not liberty from others but service from others. Who needs the right to pursue happiness when one has the right to be made happy (even if the thus-extracted “happiness” should render the indentured providers of it miserable)?
This was a view of rights that wiped moral agency right out of existence. Positive rights are thus nothing more than mislabeled preferences, or values, that people want the government to satisfy or attain for them—by force. They are grounded in nothing that pertains to the fundamental requirements of human nature and human survival. The theorizers of such rights in fact go out of their way to ignore such requirements. Yes, man needs bread, as stipulated. But he does not live by bread alone. He is not an ant who can survive on whatever crumbs fate happens to strew in his path. He needs the freedom to make the bread and trade the bread.
Read more: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-perils-of-positive-rights#ixzz2dCLi3Txd
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quoting from the essay, i think “right” when used in the context of positive rights, means “human beings by nature owe, as a matter of enforceable obligation, part or even all of their lives to other persons.”
and thems fightin’ words.
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find an example of a time here when someone else defined a term and Scott let the definition stand unchallenged.
And just as if someone said “Beetlejuice’:
a right is the moral sanction on individual action (or inaction). Within this understanding…
Only that is not the universal understanding. It is one definition that happens to fit your worldview.
I’m going to resort to quoting Wikipedia just because it’s useful to do so.
It goes on to discuss some of the historic disputes over what rights are and if they even exist. By always insisting on the narrowest definition of natural negative rights as the only ”real’ rights, the deck is stacked against any further discussion. They guy who sets the rules wins the card game.
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yello:
It is one definition that happens to fit your worldview.
Of course it does. My worldview was formed as a function of my understanding of what a right is. And when I use the term to explain my worldview, you should understand me to be using it to mean what I have said it means. What would be notable would be if I used the term to mean something that was not consistent with my worldview.
By always insisting on the narrowest definition of natural negative rights…
Asking you to define your terms is not “insisting” on any particular definition. Indeed it is the opposite. I am willing to evaluate your claims under your own definition, but only if you actually provide one. What I suspect, though, is that you can’t offer a definition that is consistent with all the things you claim are rights. Which is probably why you don’t.
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“human beings by nature owe, as a matter of enforceable obligation, part or even all of their lives to other persons.”
They’re called taxes. And they are inevitable. Are they theft?
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I disagree that “taxes” is the same thing as a “right.”
this gets into the private vs. public good distinction.
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Taxes are “a matter of enforceable obligation, part or even all of their lives to other persons.” Any enforceable obligation is backed by a threat of confiscation, imprisonment or death. Threats of violence are a violation of rights. Taking by force is theft. All taxes are theft. QED.
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One is allowed one’s own opinion. One is not allowed one’s own definition.
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Isn’t clarity preferable to agreement?
Define clarity and agreement.
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no they’re not, not when used for public rather than private goods … [edit] b/c they’re not benefiting a particular person or class of person.
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One is allowed one’s own opinion. One is not allowed one’s own definition.
I’m asking sincerely, do you believe that for everything there is One Objectivly True definition that is knowable?
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Is the right to vote a negative right or a positive right? Are laws restricting a person’s right based on the inability to produce unobtainable documentation to vote an unnecessary infringement? Can laws that take away a person’s liberty be considered valid? Is conscription in the armed forces justified in war or in peace time? At any time? Who hires the judges in Galt’s Gulch?
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This would explain why my car insurance went up $100/year when I moved, despite the fact that I haven’t had a claim in over 20 years, nor a ticket in the same time.
Thanks, NoVA and jnc!! 🙂
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This would explain why my car insurance went up $100/year
Insurance rates are largely a function of population density. Don’t move to New Jersey.
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It’s a logical fallacy to assert an unproven (and unprovable) premise (the only right is the negative right to not be killed) and then build an entire libertarian utopian fantasy on top of it. Even mathematics requires axioms but they are only useful for conclusions based on those axioms.
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yello:
It’s a logical fallacy to assert an unproven (and unprovable) premise (the only right is the negative right to not be killed) and then build an entire libertarian utopian fantasy on top of it.
First of all, a logical fallacy has nothing to do with the quality of the premises upon which the argument is based. One can make a perfectly sound, logical argument based on false premises. Second, all philosophical worldviews are based at some level on fundamental premises which are unprovable.
Even mathematics requires axioms but they are only useful for conclusions based on those axioms.
Exactly! Which is precisely why it makes no sense to present a bunch of conclusions but refuse to discuss the axiom’s upon which they are based.
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if it is utopian it is only because most people are insufferable busybodies who refuse to live and let live. they are convinced they can make the world a better place if only X, Y, an Z were done and the right people are in charge. and they’ll conscript you to their cause. we’re not going to build a better man. I wish we’d stop trying.
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I’m asking sincerely, do you believe that for everything there is One Objectivly True definition that is knowable?
Ah, a classic McWing rabbit hole.
For the sake of argument, sure. Yes. And I get to make the definition, not you or anyone else. Satisfied?
If not, why should a conservative happen to be the Ultimate Arbiter? Because that’s the way this blog currently operates, and I don’t agree with that. Arbitrarily redefining terms so that they match your world view is not, actually, debating.
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Insurance rates are largely a function of population density. Don’t move to New Jersey.
Yeah, we discussed that yesterday while on the phone with my agent. As she put it, “It’s not you, it’s the other guy.”
Classic date line. . .
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i don’t recall what it was, but my rates dropped like a rock when i got married.
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public rather than private goods
Another narrowly defined largely libertarian premise. It all depends on what is a public good and what is a private good. I find not having people die of vaccinatable communicable diseases in the street a public good. Others don’t. The value to the public of a well (or even minimally) educated population is completely lost on some.
Through the representative government process we have decided that giving a semi-fixed stipend to the elderly is easier and less capricious than making them survive on personal savings alone and/or the charity of family and friends. But under libertarian theories of private goods, FICA (a particular tax) is theft because it redistributes income.
As I said, the game is won or lost before you sit at the table.
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do you believe that for everything there is One Objectivly True definition that is knowable?
We are now debating the definition of definitions. The ultimate ATiM meta-discussion.
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“The value to the public of a well (or even minimally) educated population is completely lost on some.”
this is the rub, isn’t it. just because something has value and is a positive or welcome thing, doesn’t make it a right.
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“So just what is the difference between an obligation and a right?”
I’m not going to try and defend Rand’s statement. In my opinion, he’s obfuscating for the national media in that quote.
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i got to run to a call. bye all
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Yellow, from your argument over a living wage a couple of days ago:
“yellojkt, on August 26, 2013 at 10:05 am said:
Do you regard that as preferable from a policy standpoint to companies offering jobs that pay less than a living wage?
The problem is that pure labor and supply demand calculus neglects the externalities of minimal living standards. Just because someone is willing to accept a job below a living wage (since it’s assumed an employer would be more than happy to offer one) does not mean that it should be permitted if in doing so a cost burden is placed on a third party not involved in the negotiation (and most labor negotiations are of the Hobson’s Choice variety) to cover the cost of food, shelter, and medicine (for now we will neglect the right to cable television and cellular phone service). Whatever the employer doesn’t provide has to be made up by the taxpayer, hence the argument that sub-living wages result in a subsidy to the employer.”
Why are you neglecting the right to cable television and cellular phone service? Doesn’t that indicate that you buy the public vs private good framing?
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just because something has value and is a positive or welcome thing, doesn’t make it a right.
OK, that would be true. But doesn’t society, as a whole, have an obligation to advance those things that are positive and valuable? So how do we place a premium on them?
I disagree with expecting religious organizations to charitably pick up the slack, just as I disagree with charities in general being expected to pick up society’s slack–in the US, none of us are going to agree on anything, so no charity will fit everyone’s definition of good. Taxes seem to be the next most logical thing–even if we don’t all agree on how they’re distributed, we should be able to agree on how they’re assessed. In my utopian universe, of course.
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I am willing to evaluate your claims under your own definition
No, you aren’t, as you’ve demonstrated repeatedly by insisting on redefining terms. Why you won’t admit this is beyond me.
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Why are you neglecting the right to cable television and cellular phone service?
Because a lot of people with Obamaphones (which are really Dubyaphones, which are an extension of Reagnaphones) would be mad if we took them away.
As a practical matter it is very tough to operate in today’s society without a phone. Or without an email address and access to a computer for that matter.
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In my opinion, he’s obfuscating for the national media in that quote.
What?! But he’s a politician! If he were a True Libertarian, he would have the conviction of his values to say that nobody has a right to anything except to not be wantonly killed by jackbooted thugs, let alone the obligation on the part of anybody to give them ‘free stuff’. And they should be grateful that that counts as enough of a public good to justify taxes.
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Beetlejuice.
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Here’s my axiom:
The function of society is to improve the condition of its inhabitants. Minimally it should prevent the unnecessary death or deprivation of its members. I would quote the Golden Rule but that is easily turned backwards. Here is what Kurt Vonnegut once said:
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yello:
The function of society is to improve the condition of its inhabitants. Minimally it should prevent the unnecessary death or deprivation of its members.
Based on this it seems to me that a more fundamental premise that you hold is that society is a sentient being that can consciously take actions to fulfill a function. I would dispute such a premise as obviously false. A society is a simply an abstract concept for a collection of individuals who interact with each other in various ways. It is not an actual, sentient being that can “choose” to do this or that on the basis that it “should”. What a society “does” is strictly a function of all the interactions of the individuals in it, and therefore what a society “should” do cannot be separated from what the individuals within it “should” do.
I would add that whether or not the condition of any individual that is a part of a society is being improved or not is largely a subjective measure based on what the individuals themselves think and value. And, except on a relatively small scale, it is probably a utopian fantasy to expect that the condition of all inhabitants in a given society would be being improved at any given time.
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BTW, I think the strongest critique of the libertarian worldview lies not in attacking its understanding or application of rights, which is both coherent and consistent even if one doesn’t like the results, nor in characterizing it as “utopian”, as libertarianism doesn’t make any pretense that it will produce outcomes that will be universally preferred. Rather, I think the best critiques of libertarian philosophy lie in questioning how a moral claim over property can be established in the absence of a pre-existing legal framework designed to do just that.
jnc/nova/mcwing(to the extent that you are libertarian)…I am curious how you guys approach this problem.
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a logical fallacy has nothing to do with the quality of the premises upon which the argument is based.
True enough. And thanks for parsing the distinction between false premise and logical fallacy. But a conclusion based on a false premise can still be invalid no matter how rigorous the logic. Again from the font of all wisdom, Wikipedia.
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yello:
But a conclusion based on a false premise can still be invalid no matter how rigorous the logic.
True, but you specifically said that the premise was unprovable, which also makes it non-falsifiable. So saying that libertarians draw invalid conclusions because of a false premise doesn’t make any more sense than saying that they have engaged in logically fallacious thinking because they proceed from an unprovable premise.
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This works for me:
http://i.word.com/idictionary/clarity
http://i.word.com/idictionary/Agreement
I would like to know if the person(s) I’m conversing with have a different definition of those words though, wouldn’t you?
I admit to being stunned that understanding terms is not only unnecessary but frowned upon by all Right Thinking People.
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Good times, good times.
http://m.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071129/NEWS/71129018&template=wapart
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George, frankly, given that you don’t really seek a conversation I’m not going to click. When you do (want to have a conversation) I’ll be around, but until then I don’t see a reason to follow you down rabbit holes. There are too many better uses of my time.
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Hmmmmmm…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579038930800899184?mg=reno64-wsj.html?dsk=y
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McWing (from Taranto):
Her argument is an appeal to emotion in the service of a question-begging non sequitur.
Now there’s a guy who knows his logical fallacies.
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I’d swap “society” for “government” in yello’s line and base the argument that way. (not me, but you know what I mean)..
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nova;
I’d swap “society” for “government” in yello’s line and base the argument that way.
I suspect that a lot of the people who agree with yello view government and society as basically the same thing. Government is the vehicle by which society acts. I think that is wrong, but it seems to be implied by a lot of the arguments employed by the left.
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Since people are putting words in my mouth, government is a subset of society. Society in general includes religious, commercial, and charitable (non-profit) entities. Of these, only government has the monopoly on force to compel action but the other sectors have their own powers for good or bad as well.
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yello:
Since people are putting words in my mouth
Not my intention. I was just talking about my experience with people who make similar claims to yours.
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Goldberg today on MLK. he hits on the positive v. negative issue:
In the American context, these are universal appeals. King pleaded for the fulfillment of America’s classically liberal revolution. At the core of that revolution was the concept of negative liberty — being free from government-imposed oppression. That is why the Bill of Rights is framed in the negative or designed to restrict the power of government. “The Congress shall make no law” that abridges freedom of speech, assembly, etc.
This arrangement has never fully satisfied the Left. The founding philosopher of American progressivism, John Dewey, argued for positive rights: We have the right to material things — homes, jobs, education, health care, etc. Herbert Croly, the author of the progressive bible The Promise of American Life, argued that the Founding was unfinished and that only by turning America into a European-style cradle-to-grave social democracy could our “promise” be fulfilled. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to in effect replace the Bill of Rights with a new “economic bill of rights” along these lines. That was the intellectual tradition of Randolph and, to a significant degree, Barack Obama.
The problem is that, in America at least, appeals to social planning and guaranteed economic rights are not universal. They are, deservedly, controversial and contestable. They are all the more so when decoupled from the idea of colorblindness.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356887/martin-luther-king-jrs-real-message-jonah-goldberg
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“Since people are putting words in my mouth,”
not my intention. sorry if it read that way. which. .. it kind of does
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Scott — are you asking about the origin of property rights?
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nova:
are you asking about the origin of property rights?
Yes. The libertarian view of government is, essentially, that government exists to protect rights that are presumed to exist independently of government. That is why I always say that rights are first and foremost moral, not legal, claims. It seems self-evident that people have a legitimate moral claim over themselves and their own actions, but what gives person A a moral claim over, say, that plot of land next to the river that person B does not have?
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Property is theft. As are taxes.
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but do i really own my property if I have to pay Lord Fairfax?
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“Rather, I think the best critiques of libertarian philosophy lie in questioning how a moral claim over property can be established in the absence of a pre-existing legal framework designed to do just that.
jnc/nova/mcwing(to the extent that you are libertarian)…I am curious how you guys approach this problem.”
I haven’t really considered it. If you go back to the whole Locke state of nature, then it’s established by force, i.e. I shoot anyone who breaks into my house, but I’m not sure of that’s what you mean by moral.
On a basic level, if I built it, it belongs to me.
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jnc:
On a basic level, if I built it, it belongs to me.
Yes, I think that is right. Your mind and effort is what built it, and so you have a legitimate claim to the product of that thought and effort. But it also required materials, and so at a more basic level you need to have a claim on those materials to start with. I am not sure how that is established. Except, as you point out, by force.
This is the weak link in libertarian philosophy, I think.
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I’m partial to Locke’s view on it, but it’s been a long time, so I should brush up on it before citing it.
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corked.
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“but what gives person A a moral claim over, say, that plot of land next to the river that person B does not have?”
Absent a competing claim, simply the ability to effectively claim and develop the land. I.e. the old West land rush.
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Locke: “Sec.27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
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moral claim over property can be established in the absence of a pre-existing legal framework designed to do just that.
The two go hand in hand, that’s why it’s fascinating to me that non-libertarians like to seem to think Libertarian’s are anarchists.
Societies that have an established property rights system tend to do well economically. The property has clear ownership and can be used as collateral. English common law is very good about this. The origin of property rights is murkier I think and has to stem from the concept that all Things are owned by someone or something. It used to be a King, and his right of ownership was not questioned. He could disperse his land at his desire. The morality of it seems less easy to explain as the “chain of custody” is easy.
No answer here other than tradition. That’s not a moral foundation though, but merely inertia.
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“Except, as you point out, by force.
This is the weak link in libertarian philosophy, I think.”
I don’t think it’s a wink link per se. At the end of the day, everything comes back to force and coercion. The question is what is the basis for limiting it. Libertarianism provides the most consistent answer for when force is justified, i.e. solely to prevent harm to others.
In a state of nature, trees, animals and other real property don’t have “rights” that can be infringed on by development. Staking your claim in an uninhabited wilderness doesn’t strike me as inconsistent with libertarian morality, which like all morality is based on interactions between two or more people.
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Societies that have an established property rights system tend to do well economically.
Property rights and the rule of law are the cornerstones of Western civilization. Where either is weakened, society becomes more anarchic.
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jnc:
Staking your claim in an uninhabited wilderness doesn’t strike me as inconsistent with libertarian morality, which like all morality is based on interactions between two or more people.
I agree, but what defines the boundaries of what you can claim as your own, such that no one else can come along and make the same claim? Ultimately it is going to be whatever you can successfully defend. If you cannot successfully defend it, your claim falls. And whoever took it, provided they can defend it, suddenly has a legitimate claim. So at root the claim seems to be made legitimate by force.
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“Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 28, 2013 at 8:23 am said:
…
The two go hand in hand, that’s why it’s fascinating to me that non-libertarians like to seem to think Libertarian’s are anarchists.”
Somalia is always trotted out, but that’s always been an absurd comparison.
Deadwood is a more interesting case, at least as it’s been popularly portrayed.
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and the more complex and vast the law becomes, the more you rely on the rule of man.
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Might makes right(s).
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In Alaska this summer I kept stumbling across references to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act which settled the fact that while we had bought Alaska from Russia, Russia had stolen the land from the natives. The law established twelve Alaska Native regional corporations to manage remaining land and properties (including mineral rights) deemed to still belong to various native Alaskan groups. It also providing compensation for the ‘taking’ of the rest of the state. I found it an interesting variation on the various land treaties made with Native Americans in the lower 48 states.
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“I agree, but what defines the boundaries of what you can claim as your own, such that no one else can come along and make the same claim?”
Well, in my example getting there first. Presumably also being able to effectively survey & control what you claim.
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This isn’t the Wild West anymore you guys.
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no, but i suppose it’s just a proxy fight over the role of government,
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That was a joke nova. Go back and read the comments. You guys sound like early settlers…………….. 😉
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After the Zombie Apocalypse, the survivors will needs some guidance on how to divvy up Galt’s Gulch in accordance with libertarian principles.
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i just assumed the only survivors would be the libertarians.
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“lmsinca, on August 28, 2013 at 11:07 am said:
That was a joke nova. Go back and read the comments. You guys sound like early settlers”
Well yes. The argument Scott presented was how “a moral claim over property” can be established in the first place where there’s no government or laws.
In many ways this is a chicken and the egg problem in the context of “rights”, but I suspect that the honest answer is in the absence of law, force is used.
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JNC, but why is that Libertarian? In the West where there was much land and very few laws people staked their claim and then hung on, if they could. That just doesn’t bear much resemblance to Libertarians today and really, if it did, then we were all Libertarians.
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The settling of The West was very dependent on massive land giveaways by the federal government both in easements to railroads and homesteading rules for settlers.
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It goes to the question of can the concept of property exist in the absence of a legal framework, and if so what’s it’s moral basis if property is to be considered a “right”.
Aka deep in the weeds over first principles.
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Okay, I’ll leave you philosophers to it. My point I guess is that even first principles don’t exist in a vacuum and that some things are obvious, even to me.
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“Okay, I’ll leave you philosophers to it.”
that struck me as hilarious. like, jeeze, those guys are at it again.
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Nova………….haha…………too true. You’ll notice I wasn’t about to get in the middle of it, no death wish here.
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