[lit-ideas] Re: Thoughts?
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2008 17:04:42 -0230
Please see specific replies below ------->
Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Walter: Pakistan, for example, would be distinctly worthy of involvement
> by the *democracies* [emphasis mine-EY] of the world.
>
> This answers Julie's question about my "perspective." The US should not
> decide who or what is worth "saving." Rather we should concentrate on
> military self-defense and let the rest to "action in concert by the
> democracies."
---------> This sounds a tad self-contradictory to me. The "action" you speak
of
is not possible under the condition that all parties to it concentrate on
military self-defense. You are calling for a special exemption for one state,
without providing any grounds for the legitimacy of such an exemption.
(As well, I doubt there is an "invisible hand" guiding us to collective
security
through the pursuit of self-interest. Surely he harmony we seek is "political,
not metaphysical," to borrow a phrase.)
> This would force passive democracies to participate fully
> or to share the collective guilt for indifference.
-----------> No "other" democracy would be willing to participate fully should
the most powerful democracy on earth be seen to be concentrating on its own
self-defense and self-interest. Under such circumstances, there would be no
felt pangs of collective guilt - only widespread resentment towards a state
intent primarily to secure "self-defense" at home and abroad. The cosmopolitan
ideal of a Golden Mean between the pursuit of one's own safety and security,
and beneficence towards the planet's weak and impoverished may one day render a
concentration on self-defense unecessary and ill advised.
> The real matter is
> not which hellhole the US should rush into (and if not, poor us, how
> deep our decline!) but rather what the rest of the world will do.
-----------> This too is not universalizable. If all states were to defer to
other states, or to wait and see which policies the other states will choose to
act on, no action by any state would be possible.
> If wealthy emirates would rather build towers to sunstruck sky gods than
> deal with regional genocide, that speaks to them.
------------> We dirty our own hands by attempting to wash them of others'
troubles. Our response to moral wrong directly interrogates us.
> Ditto with patrolling
> the seas for pirates. The US should "call" the world on its
> self-righteousness, embrace the equally mythic nature of US decline, and
> focus on its own infrastructure, security, and education.
------> See above.
> Plus Mars and
> Moon colonies sound like good ideas.
-------------> I believe they are necessary ideas. But the problems of humanity
will follow it whether it takes small steps across boirdering states or giant
leaps across the solar system. The "moral order within" will continue to define
us regardless of our successes in "the starry heavens above."
Temporarily leaving the rigors of contemplation for a holiday sojourn in the
political life,
Walter O.
Ohne Sorgen
>
> Functional in practice but not in theory,
> Eric
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