The basic gist goes something like this: Authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (see here for some of the horrors they're up to under the current dictator), defunct Communist regimes, the Nazi Party, and the Iranian theocracy rule by heavy censorship and punishment of dissenting voices. This means, I believe, one of two things:
(1) "Ideas so good that they're mandatory"
(2) These regimes tacitly confess that their ideological dictates can't win in the free, fair and open marketplace of ideas, which means their dictates are likely fundamentally flawed or false, with evil/destructive consequences to be expected for so many concerned/affected. By being forcibly imposed, these ideological dictates have not received a proper vetting to accountably distinguish mere opinion from knowledge. This being so, the likes of Xi Jinpeng don't know that they're "leading" their nations in a good or healthy direction; as far as they know, they're doing just the opposite. The coronovirus outbreak is the tip of the iceberg, and that's just this one authoritarian regime.
You might readily guess which of these two interpretations I subscribe to. Heck, do any conscientious philosophers disagree about this?
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Monday, February 3, 2020
Friday, November 29, 2019
Socrates/Plato/Aristotle vs. Christianity?
Or: is Original Sin plausible?
(a 'Green Friday' special lol)
Based on my exposure to Christian thinking over the course of a few decades, it strikes me that very short shrift is given in Christian thought to the message and examples set by the iconic Greek trio of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It compels me now to ask such questions as: Okay, that is a highly disappointing apparent performance by Christendom on the whole, but what about the strongest examples of Christian thought, especially ones deeply conversant with the Greeks and Aristotle (the pinnacle of Greek learning/thought) in particular. And so, my mind goes (of course?) to Aquinas. And so I have to envision (for now) what Aquinas might have said on the topic of Original Sin in light of these three sage examples, and it might also work to research whatever he actually did say on the connection between these two topics. (If he had said things about this connection, wouldn't we have heard a lot about it by now?)
I recently saw quoted a letter from Ben Franklin to a man who claimed to be able to self-rule just fine without traditional religious beliefs, and Franklin said that this may be fine for him (the correspondent) but a lot of people simply don't have the discipline; they're weak of will, perhaps incurably ignorant - fallen and corrupt if you will. Some Christian thinkers go further with their wording: "wretched and miserable." And Aristotle even seems to say as much about a lot of biological humans who just don't seem cut out even remotely for a philosophical life. They being oftentimes base and vicious, the best we might hope to do in such cases is to train them in nonphilosophical habits of thought that nonetheless encourage socially acceptable behaviors. The Framers of the United States Constitution said that because of human weaknesses it is best that powers be separated so that bad judgment and appetites be kept in check (especially where the levers of coercive force/power are concerned). Many present-day American Christians take this as part of the body of evidence of the nation's "Judeo-Christian provenance". (I ask as I've asked before: so how come it took only until after John Locke, who formulated the most complete theory of individual rights up to that point, for there to be an America-like nation "founded on Judeo-Christian principles"? Perhaps such Christians should make extra efforts to avoid the vice of epistemic hubris, heh heh.)
But isn't Original Sin supposed to be an unqualified and universal condition of man the species, of mankind, and not merely (say) the vast majority of men, and that all humans need Christ as redeemer? And isn't it supposed to be eminently plausible (from overwhelming evidence in the world) according to standard Christian doctrine that there are no exceptions to this? And so now, the obvious(?) question: How do Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fail to be exceptions?
I guess I'll leave it there for now.
[Addendum 12/12/2019: This isn't even to bring up Nietzsche's well-known antipathy to Christianity, particularly its human-weakness anthropology in contrast to his own heroic-possibilities, noble-soul one which he appears to share with Aristotle. To him, it didn't ring true that even people like him were unavoidably weak and corrupt (without Christ). But something is telling me that bringing up the examples of the ancient Greek trio is less triggering to Christians than bringing up Nietzsche. Nietzsche's aphorism about the noble soul comes, after all, in a book triggeringly titled Beyond Good and Evil. What does Nietzsche's new value system have to offer the weak and less-smart masses? Roughly, his modus ponens looks like Christianity's modus tollens: if man is weak and corrupt, then he needs Christ for redemption or salvation. And from what I can tell his anthropology divides humanity into the weak/dumb masses on the one hand and people such as him on the other, whereas Christianity doesn't make the division (except, I suppose, for the one human+divine person in history). Plato and Aristotle are less triggering in this regard (how much so?...), and there's the Aquinas connection that would be a bad idea for Christians to ignore....]
(a 'Green Friday' special lol)
Based on my exposure to Christian thinking over the course of a few decades, it strikes me that very short shrift is given in Christian thought to the message and examples set by the iconic Greek trio of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It compels me now to ask such questions as: Okay, that is a highly disappointing apparent performance by Christendom on the whole, but what about the strongest examples of Christian thought, especially ones deeply conversant with the Greeks and Aristotle (the pinnacle of Greek learning/thought) in particular. And so, my mind goes (of course?) to Aquinas. And so I have to envision (for now) what Aquinas might have said on the topic of Original Sin in light of these three sage examples, and it might also work to research whatever he actually did say on the connection between these two topics. (If he had said things about this connection, wouldn't we have heard a lot about it by now?)
I recently saw quoted a letter from Ben Franklin to a man who claimed to be able to self-rule just fine without traditional religious beliefs, and Franklin said that this may be fine for him (the correspondent) but a lot of people simply don't have the discipline; they're weak of will, perhaps incurably ignorant - fallen and corrupt if you will. Some Christian thinkers go further with their wording: "wretched and miserable." And Aristotle even seems to say as much about a lot of biological humans who just don't seem cut out even remotely for a philosophical life. They being oftentimes base and vicious, the best we might hope to do in such cases is to train them in nonphilosophical habits of thought that nonetheless encourage socially acceptable behaviors. The Framers of the United States Constitution said that because of human weaknesses it is best that powers be separated so that bad judgment and appetites be kept in check (especially where the levers of coercive force/power are concerned). Many present-day American Christians take this as part of the body of evidence of the nation's "Judeo-Christian provenance". (I ask as I've asked before: so how come it took only until after John Locke, who formulated the most complete theory of individual rights up to that point, for there to be an America-like nation "founded on Judeo-Christian principles"? Perhaps such Christians should make extra efforts to avoid the vice of epistemic hubris, heh heh.)
But isn't Original Sin supposed to be an unqualified and universal condition of man the species, of mankind, and not merely (say) the vast majority of men, and that all humans need Christ as redeemer? And isn't it supposed to be eminently plausible (from overwhelming evidence in the world) according to standard Christian doctrine that there are no exceptions to this? And so now, the obvious(?) question: How do Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fail to be exceptions?
I guess I'll leave it there for now.
[Addendum 12/12/2019: This isn't even to bring up Nietzsche's well-known antipathy to Christianity, particularly its human-weakness anthropology in contrast to his own heroic-possibilities, noble-soul one which he appears to share with Aristotle. To him, it didn't ring true that even people like him were unavoidably weak and corrupt (without Christ). But something is telling me that bringing up the examples of the ancient Greek trio is less triggering to Christians than bringing up Nietzsche. Nietzsche's aphorism about the noble soul comes, after all, in a book triggeringly titled Beyond Good and Evil. What does Nietzsche's new value system have to offer the weak and less-smart masses? Roughly, his modus ponens looks like Christianity's modus tollens: if man is weak and corrupt, then he needs Christ for redemption or salvation. And from what I can tell his anthropology divides humanity into the weak/dumb masses on the one hand and people such as him on the other, whereas Christianity doesn't make the division (except, I suppose, for the one human+divine person in history). Plato and Aristotle are less triggering in this regard (how much so?...), and there's the Aquinas connection that would be a bad idea for Christians to ignore....]
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Demo rats and impeachment: much worse than partisan hypocrisy
I wrote a post on the general topic of Demo rats and impeachment just yesterday, but I want to focus in on one essential point I raised there to highlight how monstrous these creatures have become these days:
What the current crop of filthy, disgusting, toxic slime known as the Democratic leadership in Congress and their enablers in the media and elsewhere consider to be justified, is the following:
Impeach and/or destroy someone without any credible evidence
and
Let someone else get away with obvious perjury
In other words, knowingly and deliberately punish the (presumed) innocent and let the (clearly) guilty go unpunished.
This isn't comparing like with like and then pointing to a partisan double standard. This is more sick and twisted than that. It's one thing to be a partisan hypocrite; it's another to uphold utterly opposed standards of evidence and punishment on purely partisan grounds. That makes the destroy-Kavanaugh crowd unqualified evil-doers, people who have no business having power in a sane and civil polity. Morally speaking they are criminals operating under the pretense of doing hardball politics. They are beyond the pale. They are sick and twisted fucks. They are not owed respect, deference, the presumption of good faith, the presumption that they are decent human beings. The proper attitude to take to the sort of people who adhere to the even-worse-than-double-standard above is one of distrust and enmity. They are enemies of the good and decency. They contravene the spirit if not letter of the Constitution they swore to uphold, when they so extremely pervert law and justice (whether for partisan ends or anything else). They are thugs and should be regarded as such.
Sen. Graham put it in less harsh tones:
If this is the sort of outright perversity that is being normalized, enabled, abetted, excused, not spoken out against, etc., on today's American left, then that speaks even worse about them than everything else I've been criticizing them for up to now. This puts them into a different category of evil. There is no good reason whatsoever to concede intellectual and moral credibility to any of the left/Dems/"progressives" who failed to do the right thing during or after the Kavanaugh episode.
If anything, it is the likes of Scumbag Kamala Harris who should be impeached, formally censured, or otherwise punished for fraudulently using the judicial process as a weapon of personal and political destruction. In no uncertain terms is she and her behavior fraudulent: this career prosecutor declared that she believed Kavanaugh's accuser before hearing the defense's side. Other leading Demo rat politicians (including Warren, Biden and Sanders) are on the record affirming that Kavanaugh's accuser was credible (and Kavanaugh not credible) enough that Kavanaugh's career should be ended. (Of course, they accuse Kavanaugh of lying under oath to the Judiciary Committee, in which case the mere usual ol' double standard is at play: they let Clinton get away with perjury but found Kavanaugh's "unacceptable." Actually, it's obvious Clinton lied; is it obvious in any way that Kavanaugh did? So even there it's not comparing like with like.) They fed and enabled media and grass roots hysteria about Kavanaugh's "credible accusers." And they repeated the same vile act, recklessly rushing to raise or renew calls for impeachment within minutes of "new" allegations coming to light just in the past month that turned out to be a dud along with the others.
This is dead-to-rights stuff if ever there was any. These creatures don't even meet minimal standards of basic decency. They can't be treated as co-equals in a search for truth because they sabotage the very underpinnings of that. It is intellectual and moral bankruptcy, if not outright malicious evil, not to recognize and repudiate this sub-decent, beyond-the-pale-even-for-politics perversity for what it is. And that appears to be the intellectual and moral state of the American left today. On the merits their intellectual and moral credibility are utterly destroyed. It doesn't please me to say such things, but it's where the totality of the evidence inexorably leads.
This is the group of creatures, remember, whose standards for impeachment (of their political opponents, that is) is such that they were rushing to call for impeachment of Kavanaugh on no good evidence whatsoever (all the while letting a Demo rat president get away with obvious perjury - how intellectually and morally perverted is that?). They can't be trusted.The Demo rats' treatment of Kavanaugh was beyond the pale, clearly so, enough to disgust even some Dems who apparently didn't speak out loud enough against the obvious perversity. If ever the 'rats destroyed their intellectual and moral credibility, it is because of their reckless attempt to destroy Kavanaugh.
What the current crop of filthy, disgusting, toxic slime known as the Democratic leadership in Congress and their enablers in the media and elsewhere consider to be justified, is the following:
Impeach and/or destroy someone without any credible evidence
and
Let someone else get away with obvious perjury
In other words, knowingly and deliberately punish the (presumed) innocent and let the (clearly) guilty go unpunished.
This isn't comparing like with like and then pointing to a partisan double standard. This is more sick and twisted than that. It's one thing to be a partisan hypocrite; it's another to uphold utterly opposed standards of evidence and punishment on purely partisan grounds. That makes the destroy-Kavanaugh crowd unqualified evil-doers, people who have no business having power in a sane and civil polity. Morally speaking they are criminals operating under the pretense of doing hardball politics. They are beyond the pale. They are sick and twisted fucks. They are not owed respect, deference, the presumption of good faith, the presumption that they are decent human beings. The proper attitude to take to the sort of people who adhere to the even-worse-than-double-standard above is one of distrust and enmity. They are enemies of the good and decency. They contravene the spirit if not letter of the Constitution they swore to uphold, when they so extremely pervert law and justice (whether for partisan ends or anything else). They are thugs and should be regarded as such.
Sen. Graham put it in less harsh tones:
If this is the sort of outright perversity that is being normalized, enabled, abetted, excused, not spoken out against, etc., on today's American left, then that speaks even worse about them than everything else I've been criticizing them for up to now. This puts them into a different category of evil. There is no good reason whatsoever to concede intellectual and moral credibility to any of the left/Dems/"progressives" who failed to do the right thing during or after the Kavanaugh episode.
If anything, it is the likes of Scumbag Kamala Harris who should be impeached, formally censured, or otherwise punished for fraudulently using the judicial process as a weapon of personal and political destruction. In no uncertain terms is she and her behavior fraudulent: this career prosecutor declared that she believed Kavanaugh's accuser before hearing the defense's side. Other leading Demo rat politicians (including Warren, Biden and Sanders) are on the record affirming that Kavanaugh's accuser was credible (and Kavanaugh not credible) enough that Kavanaugh's career should be ended. (Of course, they accuse Kavanaugh of lying under oath to the Judiciary Committee, in which case the mere usual ol' double standard is at play: they let Clinton get away with perjury but found Kavanaugh's "unacceptable." Actually, it's obvious Clinton lied; is it obvious in any way that Kavanaugh did? So even there it's not comparing like with like.) They fed and enabled media and grass roots hysteria about Kavanaugh's "credible accusers." And they repeated the same vile act, recklessly rushing to raise or renew calls for impeachment within minutes of "new" allegations coming to light just in the past month that turned out to be a dud along with the others.
This is dead-to-rights stuff if ever there was any. These creatures don't even meet minimal standards of basic decency. They can't be treated as co-equals in a search for truth because they sabotage the very underpinnings of that. It is intellectual and moral bankruptcy, if not outright malicious evil, not to recognize and repudiate this sub-decent, beyond-the-pale-even-for-politics perversity for what it is. And that appears to be the intellectual and moral state of the American left today. On the merits their intellectual and moral credibility are utterly destroyed. It doesn't please me to say such things, but it's where the totality of the evidence inexorably leads.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
What makes the Left so loathsome and dangerous?
Two major problems with present-day left-wing American politics:
1. The usual problems with leftism I've discussed before, but in particular the clamor among left-wingers - and the lefter the more bizarro and unhinged - for more government taxes, controls, etc.
2. The left's refusal to engage in a serious, responsible, accountable dialogue with the opposition (much less the strongest representatives among their opposition [e.g.]). (The irony of the left's defecating all over Habermas on this count is lost on them....) Today the leftist trend is ever more toward deplatforming, shaming, shunning, ignoring, strawmanning, contempt, hubris, flat-out dishonesty/evasion, ridicule, echo-chambering, mob intimidation, screaming and shouting, gaslighting, crying racism/sexism/transphobia/etc. on razor-thin pretexts, smearing . . . those are some big intellectual vices, and they explain a ton about the deplorable intellectual degeneration/atrophying/disease of the present-day left.
So, combine 1 with 2; what does that mean?
It means that the left seeks to impose their values and vision on the rest of America, through the ever-expanding power of the state -- but they don't want to engage in a good-faith conversation with those upon whom they seek to forcibly impose their values and vision.
This makes today's leftists something other than ordinary fellow citizens: it makes them domestic enemies.
1. The usual problems with leftism I've discussed before, but in particular the clamor among left-wingers - and the lefter the more bizarro and unhinged - for more government taxes, controls, etc.
2. The left's refusal to engage in a serious, responsible, accountable dialogue with the opposition (much less the strongest representatives among their opposition [e.g.]). (The irony of the left's defecating all over Habermas on this count is lost on them....) Today the leftist trend is ever more toward deplatforming, shaming, shunning, ignoring, strawmanning, contempt, hubris, flat-out dishonesty/evasion, ridicule, echo-chambering, mob intimidation, screaming and shouting, gaslighting, crying racism/sexism/transphobia/etc. on razor-thin pretexts, smearing . . . those are some big intellectual vices, and they explain a ton about the deplorable intellectual degeneration/atrophying/disease of the present-day left.
So, combine 1 with 2; what does that mean?
It means that the left seeks to impose their values and vision on the rest of America, through the ever-expanding power of the state -- but they don't want to engage in a good-faith conversation with those upon whom they seek to forcibly impose their values and vision.
This makes today's leftists something other than ordinary fellow citizens: it makes them domestic enemies.
Monday, January 21, 2019
Disturbing statement from Kamala Harris
This is almost unbelievable:
How in the fuck would we want a criminal prosecutor with the sort of mindset expressed here? What is there to regret about not prosecuting a case where there isn't evidence? It's not the place of a prosecutor to regret not being able to charge someone without evidence even if there is some extrajudicial standard that would lead someone to reasonably conclude that the suspect committed the crime. How in the fuck would a prosecutor regret doing her job by the book?
Or let's try this rephrasing: "The evidence wasn't there but (I say) they did it."
What sort of epistemic standard is being used here? Whatever it is, it ain't a good one. If the evidence for X isn't there, then what leads her to say that X is the case? What is she in a position to know that a juror couldn't?
Conversely: had she brought charges without adequate evidence, then would she not have regretted doing so? (Regretting not doing so doesn't imply not regretting doing so, but still. The question needs to be asked, and answered without evasion.)
Civil libertarians revile a certain kind of prosecutor -- exactly the kind who would say something as vicious as the above.
Giving her the benefit of the doubt -- that she isn't a total piece of shit who would give prosecutors a bad name -- we would say that she is merely a sloppy thinker-speaker (on matters of justice, no less).
And this is the candidate currently leading among Democrats in the betting markets? (Let's not forget her and fellow Judiciary Committee Demon Rats' role and complicity in the epistemically reckless smears against Brett Kavanaugh. Perhaps she regrets not being able to help nail Kavanaugh as a sexual predator due to lack of evidence?)
[Addendum: As for Harris's involvement in the smears against Kavanaugh, it gets worse than I had previously thought. In addition to the surreal "gotcha" line of questioning (in the, uh, normal part of the hearing process) that should leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone with common sense, she leaped off the very same epistemic cliff that other Demon Rats such as Sens. Gillibrand, Hirono and Senate Demon Rat leader Schumer threw themselves off of, and declared prior to a full inquiry that she believed Dr. Ford, Kavanaugh's accuser. This right there damages her epistemic credibility. Recall that the credibility of Ford's accusation boils down to this: she "remembers" her friend Leland Keyser at the supposed party in question as much as she "remembers" Kavanaugh being there; neither Keyser nor anyone else questioned under penalty of perjury shares Dr. Ford's memory of this supposed party. If Sen. Harris regularly conducted herself as a prosecutor as disgracefully and slime-like as she did in regard to Kavanaugh, then that's cause for concern to anyone who cherishes justice.]
[Addendum #2: If you really want to piss off commonsense civil libertarians, one good way to do so is to throw your support behind civil asset forfeiture laws. Harris doesn't disappoint there. Couple this with a "believe the accuser before hearing both sides" and/or "regret not bringing charges without evidence" mentality and you've got a recipe for plenty of legalized scumbaggery. For further evidence of Harris scumbaggery, see in particular items 10 and 15 here.]
[Addendum #3: It has been pointed out to me by a prosecutor (an Objectivist who, qua Objectivist, upholds the virtue of honesty as a life-or-death principle, so there's no room for fucking around here) that there are rules of evidence that make the totality of evidence available to prosecutors wider than the evidence that is admissible at trial. Fair enough. There must be good reasons for such rules to be in effect, to constrain what the state can do against the accused. So how is that cause for regret?]
“I can tell you of the cases where I really regret that we were not able to charge somebody that molested a child but the evidence wasn’t there.”
How in the fuck would we want a criminal prosecutor with the sort of mindset expressed here? What is there to regret about not prosecuting a case where there isn't evidence? It's not the place of a prosecutor to regret not being able to charge someone without evidence even if there is some extrajudicial standard that would lead someone to reasonably conclude that the suspect committed the crime. How in the fuck would a prosecutor regret doing her job by the book?
Or let's try this rephrasing: "The evidence wasn't there but (I say) they did it."
What sort of epistemic standard is being used here? Whatever it is, it ain't a good one. If the evidence for X isn't there, then what leads her to say that X is the case? What is she in a position to know that a juror couldn't?
Conversely: had she brought charges without adequate evidence, then would she not have regretted doing so? (Regretting not doing so doesn't imply not regretting doing so, but still. The question needs to be asked, and answered without evasion.)
Civil libertarians revile a certain kind of prosecutor -- exactly the kind who would say something as vicious as the above.
Giving her the benefit of the doubt -- that she isn't a total piece of shit who would give prosecutors a bad name -- we would say that she is merely a sloppy thinker-speaker (on matters of justice, no less).
And this is the candidate currently leading among Democrats in the betting markets? (Let's not forget her and fellow Judiciary Committee Demon Rats' role and complicity in the epistemically reckless smears against Brett Kavanaugh. Perhaps she regrets not being able to help nail Kavanaugh as a sexual predator due to lack of evidence?)
[Addendum: As for Harris's involvement in the smears against Kavanaugh, it gets worse than I had previously thought. In addition to the surreal "gotcha" line of questioning (in the, uh, normal part of the hearing process) that should leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone with common sense, she leaped off the very same epistemic cliff that other Demon Rats such as Sens. Gillibrand, Hirono and Senate Demon Rat leader Schumer threw themselves off of, and declared prior to a full inquiry that she believed Dr. Ford, Kavanaugh's accuser. This right there damages her epistemic credibility. Recall that the credibility of Ford's accusation boils down to this: she "remembers" her friend Leland Keyser at the supposed party in question as much as she "remembers" Kavanaugh being there; neither Keyser nor anyone else questioned under penalty of perjury shares Dr. Ford's memory of this supposed party. If Sen. Harris regularly conducted herself as a prosecutor as disgracefully and slime-like as she did in regard to Kavanaugh, then that's cause for concern to anyone who cherishes justice.]
[Addendum #2: If you really want to piss off commonsense civil libertarians, one good way to do so is to throw your support behind civil asset forfeiture laws. Harris doesn't disappoint there. Couple this with a "believe the accuser before hearing both sides" and/or "regret not bringing charges without evidence" mentality and you've got a recipe for plenty of legalized scumbaggery. For further evidence of Harris scumbaggery, see in particular items 10 and 15 here.]
[Addendum #3: It has been pointed out to me by a prosecutor (an Objectivist who, qua Objectivist, upholds the virtue of honesty as a life-or-death principle, so there's no room for fucking around here) that there are rules of evidence that make the totality of evidence available to prosecutors wider than the evidence that is admissible at trial. Fair enough. There must be good reasons for such rules to be in effect, to constrain what the state can do against the accused. So how is that cause for regret?]
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