I think the jury is still out if legalization of illegal drugs would result in a similar situation, or if legalization in other countries is a good indication of how legalization would work in the U.S. I do think that we should start working on this question, rather than consistantly ignore it. We should have more scientific studies on Schedule A drugs and their long-term effects, so that we can make decisions based on facts rather than politics and prejudices.
It doesn't matter how "legalization would work" in the United States. If you care to have a legal system that is just and moral, then the appropriate question to ask is this: Is it morally permissable to punish consenting adults for using (insert your favorite mind-altering substance here)?
I offer this humble (not original) proposal for deciding when it is OK to make something a crime. Find a victim. Oh, and the perpetrator and victim may not be the same person.
Before you start to point at the children of addicts as victims, be ready to answer exactly how possessing or using drugs victimizes them directly. If your answer that it causes neglect or abuse, note that child neglect and abuse are already crimes. Also be ready to answer why it should be a crime for people with no children to use drugs.
Disclaimer (and a little bit of a troll): I don't have this opinion because I want to be a pothead or junkie. My drug of choice is an occasional Guinness.
I am aware that my assertion rests on the assumption that there is an absolute right and wrong. I am aware that there is an opposing, relativistic view. I am aware that I have not proven my side. Maybe the relativistic view is true. So sue me.
Of course, even if I am correct, and rights are absolute, one must still assert and defend them, if one expects to exercise them.
Definition 3 was out of line. But how about this one for "just," again from MR:
2. Consistent with what is morally right; righteous: a just cause.
I have been trying to make the distinction between a moral right and a legal right. Are you claiming that the the word "right" is improperly used in that context? If so, do you understand what I am (apparently) miscommunicating when I talk about this kind of right? If so, in your wisdom could you give me a better word or phrase to use?
Well, after we have circled each other a few times, I think we are at least understanding each other. Your last post clarified things for me quite a bit.
Again, I do think there is an absolute morality, but acknowledge not having a knockdown convincing argument that would appeal to a wide audience. But here is how I would respond to some of your objections...
However you seem ( to me ) to have argued that you can argue that an action is wrong in an absolute sense even while there is no justifiable argument available for a particular actor in a particular culture/period. In other words, you seemed ( to me) to accept that different cultures can have completely coherent views about right and wrong that differ from the true absolute morality. That is a position that I find impossible. I.e. absolute morality must always be potentially available to any rational/moral being.
To reason logically about an absolute morality, one must make some assumptions about it. For example, even most theists and atheists agree to place some intrinsic value on human beings. I am not sure what all the base values the "absolute morality" are, but if it exists, then they do also. This is troubling, because if we make the wrong assumptions about morality, then we will make wrong moral judgments. But anyway, let's leave that problem for the moment, so I can make my point.;-)
My point is that cultures that have had views contrary to absolute morality either have had faulty reasoning, have had assumptions that disagreed with absolute morality, or maybe just didn't give a sh*t whether they were really being moral.
Take slavery in the US. Several of the Founding Fathers were troubled by the practice, even while owning slaves. The wrongness of slavery was available to them. On the other hand, folks who sincerely argued the rightness of slavery mostly seemed to operate by denying the basic humanness of black people. I'm sorry, but I can't excuse that in any culture. Some people figured it out...they all could have.
Otherwise, one may indeed suspect that there exist concepts of absolute right and wrong that we, in our current state, cannot in principle comprehend. If that is so, then, and only then, we are faced with absolute morality as a metaphysical concept that does not help us in making moral choice. And a morality that cannot help us make moral choices is an oxymoron. I think your reference to our finite being suggests the scope of our disagreement. Our finitude may explain why at a particular moment we lack moral clarity. But I think the concept of morality forbids that a whole culture should fail in the same way.
We may not be able to comprehend all of an absolute morality, but that does not keep the parts of it we do understand from helping us make moral choices. Our personal moral codes (not to go all Platonic on you) should be the best reflection of the absolute moral code that we can manage. We will fail sometimes as finite beings, but the absolute moral code still is useful.
I have no problem imagining a whole culture failing a moral test. If a single finite individual can lack moral clarity, then why can a bunch of finite individuals (a culture) not fail a moral test? The US did it. Slavery is wrong today, and slavery was wrong then.
Realizing the vast difference of actual moral arguments across time and culture I am led to believe that absolute moral principles are either non existent or extremely thin and abstract. I am uncomfortable with complete moral relativism, but the problem stated above makes me insist that any non-relativist theory of ethics must be such that what it entails should be available to any human intellect at any moment in principle. That is a high standard which most theories that pertain to absoluteness fail.
Oddly enough, I think the absolute moral code is relativistic, but not in the sense normally meant by the word in this context. The (complete) absolute moral code must provide moral guidance in every situation; that is, it must consider every detail of the situation an actor might find himself in. It is relative to the culture in the sense that it considers the culture as part of the situation of the actor, but not in the sense that it is defined in terms of the claims of the culture.
This might mean that some acts might be right in one situation and wrong in others. I claim it is sometimes wrong to shoot a person, and sometimes right. I'll leave it to the interested reader to work out which is which. (Hint: Think defense of innocents.)
Again, I claim that even if the absolute moral code is only partially available to human intellect, it is useful as a standard. What relativism allows a culture to do is choose its own moral assumptions arbitrarily, and hence set is moral code to anything whatsoever. Maybe that is correct; I know I haven't proven otherwise. But I hope it is not.
This sentence is either false as a matter of fact or true by virtue of using words outside their dictionary meaning. There was such a right and this is a historical fact easily born by ample evidence. Some people, even then, thought that this right was wrong. But the right existed.
Ah, there is the rub, I think. I have carelessly been unclear in my usage of the word "right." Here are the relevant entries from www.merriamwebster.com:
right
Function: noun
2 : something to which one has a just claim
3 : something that one may properly claim as due
Yes, there was once a legal right to own slaves under US law, but that law was not just, proper, or moral. Your very phrase "thought that this right was wrong" illustrates my whole point better than I have in several posts! If the right was wrong, then it was never a right in the first place.
You go on...
That underlying rightness has no presence in the mind of mortals. It functions in your theory as metaphysical scaffold, but it doesn't do any good because you cannot appeal to it. It just makes us feel good about ourselves. Our eternal rights are just rights that we cannot imagine living in a world without them. It is somewhat hubristic to believe that the moral foundation of the universe is defined by the limits of our imagination.
You are losing me a bit here. Why can I not appeal to an underlying rightness? Why can I not first argue that such a rightness exists, and then argue that certain things are right, and certain things wrong?
By the way, I am not arrogant enough to think that our imaginations can encompass all of an absolute morality. But if such a morality exists, then I am obligated to follow it as best as I can discern it as a finite being. If it doesn't, then the universe does not have the moral foundation you speak of above.
Actually, in a previous post, I admit that there might be zero absolute moral codes. And it is true that I find that prospect very ugly, even frightening.
You are correct that I have not (in this thread at least) made any real argument that their is any such thing as a moral code. I only said that there is either zero or one of those beasts, and no other number. That is the claim on which I was trying to hang my conclusion.
A poster from the far-flung past of this thread spoke of society changing its comcept of what is and what is not a right. My point is that if a society can redefine what is and is not a right, then it doesn't make sense to speak of rights at all. Rather, they are something else: societal conveniences or whatever you want to call them.
I think I might bullet my argument more like this:
If rights can be redefined at will, then there is no absolute morality, or even any meaningful morality at all.
The word "right," in this context, only makes sense with respect to morality.
Hence: If society can redefine rights, then the word itself loses its meaning.
I see another post from you now that shows I have perhaps carelessly assumed some word definitions. I'll answer further there.
But what happens when a society with no absolute moral compass "feels" it is ethical to create a law to punish you for being liberal, conservative, grouchy, giggly, whatever?
My point is that there is exactly one (at most) correct moral code. If we change the moral code we accept, then we are hopefully correcting our past mistakes.
We should never be so arrogant as to assume the moral code we accept is complete or correct. But if we do not assume the existence of an absolute moral code, the the whole word "moral" loses all real power. To beat a dead horse, if there is no absolute moral code, then our accepted moral code is purely a matter of personal preference!
Some of your examples illustrate my point perfectly:
The right not to be tortured by police existed before some podunk UN declaration recognized it.
There never was a right to own slaves in the USA. Anyone who claimed there was such a right was morally incorrect. Full stop.
Challenging accepted standards may lead us to better moral understanding and moral practice, but it never changes the underlying rightness or wrongness of actions.
The concept of what is a right and what is not would surely change, but I think that an Open Source society would be far more pleasant to live in that early 21st century America.
Whether you think rights come from God, from nature, or whatever, a thing is either a right or it is not. Rights exist; they are not invented.
Rights derive from a moral code. You having a right is equivalent to everyone else being morally obligated not to infringe on that right.
There is either zero or one complete, correct moral codes. If you and I disagree about a moral question, then either one or both of us is wrong, or else there is no such thing as a correct moral position. If there is no such thing as a correct moral position, then every action is as good as any other.
So take your choice. You can acknowledge the pre-existence of rights, and then argue about which things are rights and which things are not. Or you can give up the idea of rights altogether and just accept whatever society does, with no chance to challenge it on moral grounds. In that case, you also give up the chance to condemn a mass murderer on any other grounds than your own personal preferences, which without a moral code are no better than his.
That said, it seems to me that the only way to do effective filtering, short of a quantum leap in "automatic content understanding," is to use an opt-in system, rather than a filter-out system.
Little Johnny starts out with a particular set of trusted domain names allowed, say www.barney.org and www.nicecraftprojects.com. If he wants to visit another, say www.dictionary.com, then he asks his administrator (Mom?) to add it to the permitted list. Of course, if Mom is on the ball, she knows that the only reason Little Johnny wants to read the dictionary is to look up dirty words. *grin*
This way, a real-live human being does the filtering, and can decide whether Little Johnny needs to be reading something nasty like the Tech Law Journal.
Mining my garden is a bit of a different story. First, you don't "bear" mines; you plant them.
[Pentagram]
The poster I was replying to stated that the reasons he supported the carrying of firearms was NOT because of the constitution, so this is irrelevent. Feel free to read the post you skipped over.
I wrote the post you replied to! I guess I was not clear. I do think the 2nd Amendment recognizes and protects the RKBA, but I do not rely on it to make my fundamental argument for the RKBA.
My point, which I continued arguing, was that I do not have a right to plant mines in my garden because of either the 2nd Amendment or the fundamental RKBA. I also said that mines were not primarily for self-defense. You said...
You're also responsible for any damage you do with a firearm; what's your point? My point was that if the original poster really believed that you should be able to defend yourself with any weapon targetted against the individual, s/he should logically defend your right to mine your garden, a position most people would consider extreme.
and
Irrelevent. They can be used effectively for self-defense. But this is really the heart of the debate: what's so special about guns? They're just one point in a spectrum of defensive weapons.
But mines by their very nature are not targeted against an individual. Once they are set, they hurt anyone who comes along. The right to defend life does not imply a right to hurt innocent people! Someone using a firearm for defense is obligated avoid injuring bystanders, such as by knowing what is behind his target before firing.
Furthermore, mines are limited by being stationary. They could only offer dubious protection in one location. So in almost every conceivable situation for an individual, they are not effective self-defense tools.
Arguing about the right to use mines as a way of undermining the RKBA is still a strawman.
Yes, you are correct, but that was not arguing against what I was trying to say. I think almost everyone agrees that there is a limit on what measures you can take to defend yourself. Where the line should be drawn is where the argument is, not the question of whether you should be able to. In the US, the line is drawn (in general) between handguns and assault-rifles, whereas most other first-world countries (who happen to have lower homicide rates) draw the line before firearms.
The line is drawn at the point where a self-defense measure violates the rights of another person. Using a firearm responsibly does not violate anyone's rights, and certainly just possessing it does not. The line is a moral one that exists for us to discover. It is not a line that we can make up to try to get to whatever results we might want.
I don't think there's anything morally wrong with owning a gun (if it was legal in my country I'd get one) but the social advantages of keeping firearms out of the hands of the general populace seem obvious to me, and I vote to remove access to them for myself and everyone else.
If there is not something morally wrong with owning a gun, then you are morally bound to oppose a law that forbids it! Even if it were morally wrong to own a gun, you would still have to make the argument that it was morally right to use the force of law to forbid ownership. Not everything immoral should be illegal.
To pass a a law because of "social advantages" rather than because it is the right thing to do is disgusting. (And yes, I am aware that we have a lot of disgusting laws in the US. I oppose them.)
Ok...this is getting a bit complicated and off topic, but worth it I think. First, the strawman stuff:
[clary]
...it was a strawman. The original poster clearly said "devices that could wipe out all life on earth." Then he knocked that strawman down.
[Pentagram]
That's not a strawman. To create a strawman you have to misinterpret the argument of your opponents. He never claimed that the (even more) original poster supported the right to use weapons of mass destruction. He merely claimed that "arms" represented "devices that could wipe out all life on earth". You might disagree (you'd be wrong; look up the word), but that in no way makes it a strawman.
This is probably my fault for not being clear. The (even more) original poster did not mention arms at all, but claimed that guns are more difficult to get now than they have ever been (I don't necessarily agree.).
The not-so-original poster (he of the strawman) countered by saying the guns used to be more expensive and less powerful. He went on to say that 200 years ago, no one could have imagined modern weapons of mass destruction. Then he said that we already abridge the right to "arms," and now we are just arguing about where draw the line. He actually didn't even address the argument of the even more original poster, but instead countered what he thought was the standard RKBA position.
His is a version of a common anti-2nd-Amendment argument that goes like this: 1) Nukes are "arms" in the context of the 2nd Amendment. 2) No one in his right mind thinks folks should have the right to bear nukes. 3) So the 2nd Amendment is no longer valid.
The strawman is in saying that 2nd Amendment supporters argue for private ownership of nukes. If you read a little history of the Constitution, you will find out that the framers probably meant infantry weapons that one person (or maybe a squad) could "bear." This would have been firearms, grenades, maybe small cannon, etc. It would not have included warships, for instance, which unlike nukes were known at the time. (Note that it is not enough to look up "arms" in the dictionary, because you must understand the context assumed by the authors of the amendment.)
This is too long...I'll cover your other points in a separate post.
...it was a strawman. The original poster clearly said "devices that could wipe out all life on earth." Then he knocked that strawman down.
It was a valid point. You aren't allowed to carry AK47's or grenades are you? (at least I assume you aren't). And they are the weapons of choice for most of the world's infantry. I assume you're not allowed to mine your garden with anti-personnel devices either (although I take it that you think you should be following from your arguments).
In the US, possessing any kind of fully automatic firearm (e.g. AK47) or destructive device (e.g. grenade) requires a difficult-to-get, expensive license.
From a 2nd Amendment perspective, one could make the argument that the authors of the amendment would have included just such arms. This is not the only area in which our laws conveniently ignore our Constitution.
Mining my garden is a bit of a different story. First, you don't "bear" mines; you plant them. Second, planting them in my garden would make me responsible for any harm that came to someone who accidentally wandered through. Third, mines are not primarily used for self-defense, but rather for denying access to a piece of land.
The argument is not of course a conclusive case for tighter gun control. But I think it does move the focus of teh argument to practical grounds from moral ones.
Ah, but moral grounds is exactly where this argument belongs, as do all arguments that involve using the force of law to bend folks to your will! If a law is not moral, then it should not be a law, no matter how much we want the results that the law might achieve. The ends do not justify the means.
Regarding the mounted shotgun, I think I've seen similar set ups up here (Vancouver). I gotta agree with you though, thinking about places like LA or Texas scare me, especially with people having license to carry concealed, or to carry period. Do you really need to wander down main street with a holster on your hip? This is the 21st century, not the damn wild west!
Last time I counted, around 37 of the 50 US states had passed "shall issue" concealed carry laws. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of folks have obtained permits. The instances of trouble occurring caused by folks "wandering down main street with a holster on their hips" are miniscule. The media in the US would make very sure we knew if CCW-holders were shooting up main streets!
Why do you fear something that has a record of not being dangerous?
No one imagined 200 years ago that "arms" would come to mean devices that could wipe out all life on earth. But we've reached that point today, and we've made the decision that not every hot-head on the block should have The Button on their remote control. Because someone will be stupid enough to use it.
The right to "arms" has already been abridged. At this point it's only a matter of arguing about where that line is drawn.
I assume you are talking about nukes and biological weapons. No reasonable right to keep and bear arms (RKBA) proponent argues that the US 2nd Amendment recognizes a right to those weapons. "Arms," in this context should be recognized as those weapons useful to an infantry soldier, that is, something you can carry around.
I personally don't rely on the 2nd Amendment to make my arguments for the RKBA. I assume a right to life. From that right, I derive a right to defend innocent life. From that right I derive a right to possess effective tools to defend innocent life. Firearms are very effective defensive tools. Hence, the RKBA. Nukes and biological weapons are not effective tools for individuals to use in defending life. Hence, no right to keep and bear weapons of mass destruction.
You have knocked down a strawman. That proves nothing, but thanks for trying.;-)
Suddenly Quicksort is not the best sort algorythm, and the traveling salesman becomes possible to solve!
No known exact algorithm for traveling salesman is polynomial, and FPGA does not change that. For a large enough number of cities, the problem is still intractable. And that number of cities (N) is not very large, since the number of possible routes is on the order of N factorial.
The first anti-profiling law we need is one that states that no company or govenment can make submitting a profile a condition of employment or contract.
I agree "profiling" by government agencies should be strictly limited.
However, why should a company not be able to impose what conditions of employment it sees fit? I know this is not a popular idea, but damn man, go get another job if you don't like the conditions at one company. Or start your own company with conditions you do like.
Whenever possible, when I am asked for information on the net, I lie like a dog. Many sites that require filling out a form to download software now have in their database a 130-year-old woman who earns $300,000+ per year, lives in Alaska, likes rollerblading and tofu, and receives email at webmaster@microsoft.com.
Sunstein offers several possibilities for reform. He suggests "must-carry" rules in the form of links imposed on the most popular websites, designed to produce exposure to substantive questions. He even advocates "must-carry" rules, also in the form of links, for even the most highly partisan websites, designed to ensure that viewers learn about opposing views.
Who moderates the moderators? On slashdot, it is myself and lots of other metamoderators, and readers who sometimes or always read at -1.
In Sunstein's world, whoever chooses those, oh so fortunate, sites that get designated "must carry," is the moderator. I see no mention of how that moderator is kept in check.
One has the absolute moral right to speak his opinion. Everyone else has the absolute right to ignore him. Moderation systems like Slashdot's are an excellent tool to exercise the latter right.
"The problem is not public education itself, but the mandating of public education. I wouldn't mind having another tool in my parenting efforts, but others should not have to subsidize my parenting by paying taxes for public education they don't want."
I may be a bit kooky, but I am consistent. I don't just want vouchers; I want the abolition of the public school system.
Lots of things in the U.S. and Canada are mandated and paid for by the public at large even though only a (small or large) portion of that population takes advantage of it.
Just because it happens doesn't mean it is right.
My ideal would be to have zero government expenditure, at all levels from city to federal, that is not truly a "public good."
On my short list of public goods are national defense, roads, courts, police and fire services, and...well, I can't think of much else right now, but I am sure there are some more. Oh, and I am willing to entertain any arguments that we could get along without even some of the ones I mention.
The old saw goes "everyone is entitled to his opinion." But I would argue that I am entitled to my opinon only if that opinion is informed. By choosing to listen only to the news I agree with, I am abdicating my responsibility to inform myself. Therefore I am not entititled to my opinion.
Even the fuzziest thinking, most close-minded, Rush-Limbaugh-listening person in the world is entitled to have, and speak, his opinion. He has no responsibility to inform himself, even if in your opinion is that he does! He is even entitled to hold opinions that are just wrong (which he will have if he happens to disagree with me;-).
Of course, no one is obligated to pay the least attention to opinions that are ill-reasoned or ill-informed. I hear there are some cool moderating systems that actually try to filter out some of those...
I bet the author is something like 21 with no kids and some wacko idea of what it is like to be a parent these days. Slashdot is so sickingly liberal, and is inhabited by people who, for the most part, are kids in college or young adults who don't have kids of their own.
*chuckle* There are some of us old farts with multiple kids. We just can't afford that expensive hardware that lets the young folks post so fast...
Trust me *boys*....the older you get the more conservative you will become, and all of the nonsense the higher educational system imparts on you will quickly fade.
I was actually very conservative in the current US sense when I was in college. I have since become very much more libertarian.
That leads me to to something another poster said in this thread, but which is worth repeating. The problem is not the V-chip itself, but the mandating of the V-chip. I wouldn't mind having another tool in my parenting efforts, but others should not have to subsidize my parenting by buying V-chips they don't want.
But to say that the V-chip is bad just because some outside organization rates a show, and you might think that a 13 year old should be exposed to just about anything for the experience, or, probably so you can win some sort of dysfunctional free speech argument, I only need to point to a few infamous locations here in the US to dispute your argument....lets start with Columbine high school in Colorado. Lets then move on down to San Diego. You know...thats where teenagers are blowing other teenagers away faster then aDuke Nukem can say "Damn I'm looking good".
Hold it right there, partner. It is a bit of a stretch to blame TV for animals who blow away innocent human beings. Those shooters had other problems, some including parents who didn't notice they were making pipe bombs in the garage. I challenge you to show that a V-chip would have made one iota of difference in any of those cases.
Slashdot Mirror
I offer this humble (not original) proposal for deciding when it is OK to make something a crime. Find a victim. Oh, and the perpetrator and victim may not be the same person.
Before you start to point at the children of addicts as victims, be ready to answer exactly how possessing or using drugs victimizes them directly. If your answer that it causes neglect or abuse, note that child neglect and abuse are already crimes. Also be ready to answer why it should be a crime for people with no children to use drugs.
Disclaimer (and a little bit of a troll): I don't have this opinion because I want to be a pothead or junkie. My drug of choice is an occasional Guinness.
I am aware that my assertion rests on the assumption that there is an absolute right and wrong. I am aware that there is an opposing, relativistic view. I am aware that I have not proven my side. Maybe the relativistic view is true. So sue me.
Of course, even if I am correct, and rights are absolute, one must still assert and defend them, if one expects to exercise them.
Thanks for your oh-so-appreciated instruction.
Again, I do think there is an absolute morality, but acknowledge not having a knockdown convincing argument that would appeal to a wide audience. But here is how I would respond to some of your objections...
To reason logically about an absolute morality, one must make some assumptions about it. For example, even most theists and atheists agree to place some intrinsic value on human beings. I am not sure what all the base values the "absolute morality" are, but if it exists, then they do also. This is troubling, because if we make the wrong assumptions about morality, then we will make wrong moral judgments. But anyway, let's leave that problem for the moment, so I can make my point.My point is that cultures that have had views contrary to absolute morality either have had faulty reasoning, have had assumptions that disagreed with absolute morality, or maybe just didn't give a sh*t whether they were really being moral.
Take slavery in the US. Several of the Founding Fathers were troubled by the practice, even while owning slaves. The wrongness of slavery was available to them. On the other hand, folks who sincerely argued the rightness of slavery mostly seemed to operate by denying the basic humanness of black people. I'm sorry, but I can't excuse that in any culture. Some people figured it out...they all could have.
We may not be able to comprehend all of an absolute morality, but that does not keep the parts of it we do understand from helping us make moral choices. Our personal moral codes (not to go all Platonic on you) should be the best reflection of the absolute moral code that we can manage. We will fail sometimes as finite beings, but the absolute moral code still is useful.I have no problem imagining a whole culture failing a moral test. If a single finite individual can lack moral clarity, then why can a bunch of finite individuals (a culture) not fail a moral test? The US did it. Slavery is wrong today, and slavery was wrong then.
Oddly enough, I think the absolute moral code is relativistic, but not in the sense normally meant by the word in this context. The (complete) absolute moral code must provide moral guidance in every situation; that is, it must consider every detail of the situation an actor might find himself in. It is relative to the culture in the sense that it considers the culture as part of the situation of the actor, but not in the sense that it is defined in terms of the claims of the culture.This might mean that some acts might be right in one situation and wrong in others. I claim it is sometimes wrong to shoot a person, and sometimes right. I'll leave it to the interested reader to work out which is which. (Hint: Think defense of innocents.)
Again, I claim that even if the absolute moral code is only partially available to human intellect, it is useful as a standard. What relativism allows a culture to do is choose its own moral assumptions arbitrarily, and hence set is moral code to anything whatsoever. Maybe that is correct; I know I haven't proven otherwise. But I hope it is not.
You go on...
You are losing me a bit here. Why can I not appeal to an underlying rightness? Why can I not first argue that such a rightness exists, and then argue that certain things are right, and certain things wrong?By the way, I am not arrogant enough to think that our imaginations can encompass all of an absolute morality. But if such a morality exists, then I am obligated to follow it as best as I can discern it as a finite being. If it doesn't, then the universe does not have the moral foundation you speak of above.
You are correct that I have not (in this thread at least) made any real argument that their is any such thing as a moral code. I only said that there is either zero or one of those beasts, and no other number. That is the claim on which I was trying to hang my conclusion.
A poster from the far-flung past of this thread spoke of society changing its comcept of what is and what is not a right. My point is that if a society can redefine what is and is not a right, then it doesn't make sense to speak of rights at all. Rather, they are something else: societal conveniences or whatever you want to call them.
I think I might bullet my argument more like this:
I see another post from you now that shows I have perhaps carelessly assumed some word definitions. I'll answer further there.
But what happens when a society with no absolute moral compass "feels" it is ethical to create a law to punish you for being liberal, conservative, grouchy, giggly, whatever?
We should never be so arrogant as to assume the moral code we accept is complete or correct. But if we do not assume the existence of an absolute moral code, the the whole word "moral" loses all real power. To beat a dead horse, if there is no absolute moral code, then our accepted moral code is purely a matter of personal preference!
Some of your examples illustrate my point perfectly:
The right not to be tortured by police existed before some podunk UN declaration recognized it.
There never was a right to own slaves in the USA. Anyone who claimed there was such a right was morally incorrect. Full stop.
Challenging accepted standards may lead us to better moral understanding and moral practice, but it never changes the underlying rightness or wrongness of actions.
Rights derive from a moral code. You having a right is equivalent to everyone else being morally obligated not to infringe on that right.
There is either zero or one complete, correct moral codes. If you and I disagree about a moral question, then either one or both of us is wrong, or else there is no such thing as a correct moral position. If there is no such thing as a correct moral position, then every action is as good as any other.
So take your choice. You can acknowledge the pre-existence of rights, and then argue about which things are rights and which things are not. Or you can give up the idea of rights altogether and just accept whatever society does, with no chance to challenge it on moral grounds. In that case, you also give up the chance to condemn a mass murderer on any other grounds than your own personal preferences, which without a moral code are no better than his.
That said, it seems to me that the only way to do effective filtering, short of a quantum leap in "automatic content understanding," is to use an opt-in system, rather than a filter-out system.
Little Johnny starts out with a particular set of trusted domain names allowed, say www.barney.org and www.nicecraftprojects.com. If he wants to visit another, say www.dictionary.com, then he asks his administrator (Mom?) to add it to the permitted list. Of course, if Mom is on the ball, she knows that the only reason Little Johnny wants to read the dictionary is to look up dirty words. *grin*
This way, a real-live human being does the filtering, and can decide whether Little Johnny needs to be reading something nasty like the Tech Law Journal.
(Just wondering...I don't know much about Asheron's Call.)
My point, which I continued arguing, was that I do not have a right to plant mines in my garden because of either the 2nd Amendment or the fundamental RKBA. I also said that mines were not primarily for self-defense. You said...
But mines by their very nature are not targeted against an individual. Once they are set, they hurt anyone who comes along. The right to defend life does not imply a right to hurt innocent people! Someone using a firearm for defense is obligated avoid injuring bystanders, such as by knowing what is behind his target before firing.Furthermore, mines are limited by being stationary. They could only offer dubious protection in one location. So in almost every conceivable situation for an individual, they are not effective self-defense tools.
Arguing about the right to use mines as a way of undermining the RKBA is still a strawman.
The line is drawn at the point where a self-defense measure violates the rights of another person. Using a firearm responsibly does not violate anyone's rights, and certainly just possessing it does not. The line is a moral one that exists for us to discover. It is not a line that we can make up to try to get to whatever results we might want. If there is not something morally wrong with owning a gun, then you are morally bound to oppose a law that forbids it! Even if it were morally wrong to own a gun, you would still have to make the argument that it was morally right to use the force of law to forbid ownership. Not everything immoral should be illegal.To pass a a law because of "social advantages" rather than because it is the right thing to do is disgusting. (And yes, I am aware that we have a lot of disgusting laws in the US. I oppose them.)
The not-so-original poster (he of the strawman) countered by saying the guns used to be more expensive and less powerful. He went on to say that 200 years ago, no one could have imagined modern weapons of mass destruction. Then he said that we already abridge the right to "arms," and now we are just arguing about where draw the line. He actually didn't even address the argument of the even more original poster, but instead countered what he thought was the standard RKBA position.
His is a version of a common anti-2nd-Amendment argument that goes like this: 1) Nukes are "arms" in the context of the 2nd Amendment. 2) No one in his right mind thinks folks should have the right to bear nukes. 3) So the 2nd Amendment is no longer valid.
The strawman is in saying that 2nd Amendment supporters argue for private ownership of nukes. If you read a little history of the Constitution, you will find out that the framers probably meant infantry weapons that one person (or maybe a squad) could "bear." This would have been firearms, grenades, maybe small cannon, etc. It would not have included warships, for instance, which unlike nukes were known at the time. (Note that it is not enough to look up "arms" in the dictionary, because you must understand the context assumed by the authors of the amendment.)
This is too long...I'll cover your other points in a separate post.
Mining my garden is a bit of a different story. First, you don't "bear" mines; you plant them. Second, planting them in my garden would make me responsible for any harm that came to someone who accidentally wandered through. Third, mines are not primarily used for self-defense, but rather for denying access to a piece of land.
Ah, but moral grounds is exactly where this argument belongs, as do all arguments that involve using the force of law to bend folks to your will! If a law is not moral, then it should not be a law, no matter how much we want the results that the law might achieve. The ends do not justify the means.Why do you fear something that has a record of not being dangerous?
If you are not a parent...
I personally don't rely on the 2nd Amendment to make my arguments for the RKBA. I assume a right to life. From that right, I derive a right to defend innocent life. From that right I derive a right to possess effective tools to defend innocent life. Firearms are very effective defensive tools. Hence, the RKBA. Nukes and biological weapons are not effective tools for individuals to use in defending life. Hence, no right to keep and bear weapons of mass destruction.
You have knocked down a strawman. That proves nothing, but thanks for trying. ;-)
However, why should a company not be able to impose what conditions of employment it sees fit? I know this is not a popular idea, but damn man, go get another job if you don't like the conditions at one company. Or start your own company with conditions you do like.
Just my tiny contribution to the cause...
In Sunstein's world, whoever chooses those, oh so fortunate, sites that get designated "must carry," is the moderator. I see no mention of how that moderator is kept in check.
One has the absolute moral right to speak his opinion. Everyone else has the absolute right to ignore him. Moderation systems like Slashdot's are an excellent tool to exercise the latter right.
My ideal would be to have zero government expenditure, at all levels from city to federal, that is not truly a "public good." On my short list of public goods are national defense, roads, courts, police and fire services, and...well, I can't think of much else right now, but I am sure there are some more. Oh, and I am willing to entertain any arguments that we could get along without even some of the ones I mention.
Of course, no one is obligated to pay the least attention to opinions that are ill-reasoned or ill-informed. I hear there are some cool moderating systems that actually try to filter out some of those...
That leads me to to something another poster said in this thread, but which is worth repeating. The problem is not the V-chip itself, but the mandating of the V-chip. I wouldn't mind having another tool in my parenting efforts, but others should not have to subsidize my parenting by buying V-chips they don't want.
Hold it right there, partner. It is a bit of a stretch to blame TV for animals who blow away innocent human beings. Those shooters had other problems, some including parents who didn't notice they were making pipe bombs in the garage. I challenge you to show that a V-chip would have made one iota of difference in any of those cases.