Waiting for Fitzgerald

[Sidd Finch]

or another pro-free market, anti-government, economic and fiscal conservative Republican.

Can one of you please explain why, when the government is suffering record deficits and oil companies are enjoying record profits, scores of Repubs lined up to give federal subsidies to oil companies to build refineries?



Oh, yes, I know -- energy crisis and all that. But shouldn't the market take care of getting refineries built?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
or another pro-free market, anti-government, economic and fiscal conservative Republican.

Can one of you please explain why, when the government is suffering record deficits and oil companies are enjoying record profits, scores of Repubs lined up to give federal subsidies to oil companies to build refineries?



Oh, yes, I know -- energy crisis and all that. But shouldn't the market take care of getting refineries built?

Yes.

I disagree with subsidies to the private sector of any kind, including tax incentives that favour one industry over another, whether in the corporate, individual or death part of the tax code. I also disagree with pork politics whether practised by the Reps or demos. The only defence of it that I will make is that since we live in a world of government subsidies, market distorting tax incentives and pork, the oil industry should not be singled out as the one major economically crucial industry to be denied.

I have a close personal friend involved in making solar power more widely available and efficient for the masses to use for home energy needs. I pray to the babyjesuschristsuperstar that his company flourishes (I also wouldn't mind some family and friends shares in the IPO).

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
I don't think values compete. I think values are determined by instinct. And I think instinctually we all have the same values. However, sometimes people confuse values with other instincts. As an example homosexuality. I think people's hatred of homosexuality is based more from fear than from instinctual values. The people are just confusing the two.

When someone says that how can you critisize two people who love eachother entering into a permanent committed loving relationship? That is not an appeal to logic or rational. That is an appeal to someone instinct of values.

When people condemn homosexuality I think that condemnation is based on fear and prejudice and not from value based instincts. But I think deep down all people understand that it two people love eachother and want to commit to eachother there is nothing wrong with that.

Societies debate of the our legal code, is an attempt to figure out which laws are based on other things as opposed to our internal sense of right and wrong.

Of course values compete. Let's look at a much simler example than sexual indentity.

Presumably, we would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't agree that it is generally wrong to kill someone. Penske argued that killing is wrong in an absolute sense. And yet, both you and he are on record as supporting the war in Iraq.

How can killing be an absolute wrong when killing in war is acceptable? There are numerous other examples: self-defense, defense of others, abortion to save the life of the mother (or, conversely, prohibiting abortion to save the life of hte mother).

Does a universal moral code say that it is wrong to kill? How can the code deal with this simple paradox?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Spanky
I know you said you believe in SOME absolute rights and wrongs. And again I pose the same question. How can you believe in SOME absolute rights and wrongs and be a moral relativists? If certain rights and wrongs are ABSOLTES does that not make you and moral ABSOLUTIST and not a RELATIVIST. If you are a moral relativist does that not mean that ALL morals and rights are relative?

hindus worship cows. See if Taxwonk is willing to give up brisket.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
hindus worship cows. See if Taxwonk is willing to give up brisket.

Exactly. I don't eat cow out of respect for my hindu friends. I also skip the pork out of respect for my jewish friends. I am humane multi-culturalist like that.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
So basically you believe rights and laws come from a place that allow people to get along with eachother. Rights and laws are there so communities can funciton in an orderly way. So if in certain societies, if female circumscission, or throwing widows into their late husband's funeral pyre help those societies to function in an orderly and peaceful manner, then we cannot critisize them? I believe such activities are a violation of the universal moral code and are wrong, no matter what practical application, or rational behind such customs.

I also believe that almost everyone on this board agrees with that however it will be interesting to see who admits to it.

I didn't say that rights, law or mores come from a desire for people to get along. I am saying that laws, rights, mores, etc. must be balanced in order for people to survive.

I believe that female circumcision, if it is done involuntarily, is wrong. It violates the principal (the more, if you will) that people should be free from unwanted invasions upon their person.

The same can be said of cultural customs of casting wives, servants, etc. in the funeral pyre of a dead male. (Interestingly, these customs tend only to be applied to the upper stratum of a culture.) This custom violates the more that it is wrong to take a human life.

One could say that these are examples of actions that violate an absolute principal. However, how can we take action to prevent these violations of the principal if it is absolutely wrong to violate another's freedom of action or to take another's life?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Exactly. I don't eat cow out of respect for my hindu friends. I also skip the pork out of respect for my jewish friends. I am humane multi-culturalist like that.

Assume you had sex with girls. would you give up cunnilingus out of respect for bold & brazen's ex-husband?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
I know you said you believe in SOME absolute rights and wrongs. And again I pose the same question. How can you believe in SOME absolute rights and wrongs and be a moral relativists? If certain rights and wrongs are ABSOLTES does that not make you and moral ABSOLUTIST and not a RELATIVIST. If you are a moral relativist does that not mean that ALL morals and rights are relative?

No. And what's more, relativism doesn't necessarily say that all mores, rights and wrongs are not absolute. Relativism can also posit that humans are incapable of perceiving and acting with absolutes. The best they can hope to achieve is to work out some approximation. Consider Plato's allegory of the cave. Or, once again, consider the paradox inherent in acknowledging the sanctity of human life but also conceding that it is sometimes necessary to kill.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
I don't think the moral code is changing, I just think our understanding of it is. Slavery has always been wrong. Some people have always understood this. It has just taken time for the majority of people to understand this.

And yet you are a rabid supporter of CAFTA, notwithstanding that you know it will have the effect of forcing many people, in the US and outside of it, to live a life in which they are tied to a subsistence level of existence, with no hope of improving their station, and powerless to protest or complain, for fear that they will lose the meager resources they have. Or does this just mean that you have not yet come to understand that freedom requires access to opportunity? If people are tied to a subsistence level, without opportunity, aren't they really nothing more than slaves?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
If I may, here is a small fragment of it:

"All men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights, among these being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

Lovely rhetoric, but didn't we then go gladly into war, killing in order to secure these "inalienable" rights?

Note that I don't oppose the principals you espouse. I'm simply arguing that we have never in the entire history of humanity lived by them. Therefore, since society cannot be based upon these absolutes and ideals, human interaction is by necessity a matter of finding the relative balance between competing rights.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Assume you had sex with girls. would you give up cunnilingus out of respect for bold & brazen's ex-husband?

Yes and no, my abstinence would be out of sympathy for the men who have sexxed Fringey.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Of course values compete. Let's look at a much simler example than sexual indentity.

Presumably, we would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't agree that it is generally wrong to kill someone. Penske argued that killing is wrong in an absolute sense. And yet, both you and he are on record as supporting the war in Iraq.

How can killing be an absolute wrong when killing in war is acceptable? There are numerous other examples: self-defense, defense of others, abortion to save the life of the mother (or, conversely, prohibiting abortion to save the life of hte mother).

Does a universal moral code say that it is wrong to kill? How can the code deal with this simple paradox?

I never said killing was an absolute wrong. The only people that I know that have ever proposed something like this are pacifists and liberals - the same people that believe in moral relativism.

It is wrong to intentional kill innocent people. It is wrong to not kill someone if your choice is either killing them or letting them kill innocent people.

I think killing in certain circumstances is wrong, but in certain cirumstances is a moral imperative.

You are confusing absolute with simple, and are confusing relative with complex. The rules may be complex but they are absolute. Our legal system may getting more complicated all the time but it is not getting more relative. The laws in our legal system our absolute and not relative no matter how complicated they get.

When you say morals are relative you are saying that in certain circumstances it is OK to kill innocent people. Or that in some cutures it is OK to kill innocent people and not in others. Relative meams that morality can change with the circumstances. Absolute means that they do not.

Justs like our laws apply equally to all men and women all the time so does the universal moral code.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Yes and no, my abstinence would be out of sympathy for the men who have sexxed Fringey.

thank you. that's thoughtful, but not necessary.

The ringing in my ears went away a few months afterwards. the doc said it wasn't a concussion.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Nice personalisation of your politics of destruction. I think what bothers you is my articulation of more than a small fragment which offends your (a)moral relativism, which is required to justify the demos empty policies and politics.

This isn't politics, it's a philosophical debate. And I haven't destroyed anything. I've let your words speak for themselves.

Go back and look at the record, Penske. I have simply repeated your answers to my questions, and asked you to reconcile inconsistencies in what you said. You were the one who time and time again tried to throw the debate off track by posting political slogans and attacking the Democratic party.

Talk to me when you have answers and the balls to deal with me as a person instead of ranting about some ill-defined group of people you label the "enemy." I tire of your empty sloganeering.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If this board doesn't pick up in quality right quick, I will start spending time with Tucker Max.

Quality also rests in your hands, Hank. I've been trying to elevate the discourse all week. Care to join me?

p.s. the Members' Boobies Thread now has butts, too.