For most of this, I think that Hitchens is behind the mark. I've heard himn on Iraq, and he's absolutely right that Sadaam was a terrible guy, but I don't think it would've turned out this bad if one of his sons had taken over (the man was what, 65? 70?), been incompetent, and then gotten overthrown by whoever had enough moxie to put a decent rebellion together. But that's all just speculation now. Ditto for whether Sadaam's current rule qualifies as an imminent emergency -- he certainly didn't do much during the 90s to justify our response in 2003. I agree that international intervention was needed during Gulf War I -- and that's exactly what happened, with pretty much everybody coming to the party. Once the status quo ante was restored, everybody backed off -- probably the right decision, although the subsequent sanctions regime turned out not to be gracefully handled.
Where does trillions of dollars of debt and the lose of much global good-will fit into America's self interests? Empires colonize for profits. Hey, nobody said Bush was doing a good job of empire-building either! But establishing a permanent military presence throughout the world has been a fixed goal for the last fifty-sixty years of American policy. We still haven't given back those bases in Germany, or Japan, or Korea, etc., and arms deals and military patronage arrangements have had a considerable influence in the local politics of most parts of the globe (incl. those Saudi Arabian bases that prompted ObL to go all jihad-happy). See The Sorrows of Empire and Blowback (Chalmers Johnson) for further discussion.
For the UN itself, well... what can you say about an organization that's chartered such that every major stakeholder has veto power? Oops... But the sad news is that basically nobody has a very good record of shutting down genocides. Perhaps "regional alliances" would have been a better choice of entities -- I'm thinking NATO in Bosnia -- but still, the point is there needs to be an international-cooperation model to establish legitimacy and avoid the temptation for a military power grab, incl. permanent bases and land cessions, because the power grab will have blowback.
So basically, my perspective is that unilateral intervention is sufficiently inferior to broad cooperative intervention that doing nothing is likely the better option, save in cases of genocide (which Sadaam wasn't actively engaged in any more). Ultimately most of the sectarian fighting is about who gets the oil money, so that was probably going to be a disaster regardless; I would turn Hitchens' question around and ask if the trillions spent and thousands of (coalition) lives lost have helped things enough to be worthwhile. Ignoring motives etc. but accepting the screwups as they've foreseeably occurred, are we getting good value for our blood and treasure? Would it have been substantially worse for Iraqis if it were just the Turks and the Iranians getting their boys blown up instead of us? It'll likely always be an open question--stupid lack of a control Earth. Makes history so much more difficult.
I was opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning, because I knew we were going to screw it up. That is the history of every military intervention we've had since WWII (with the exception of Kosovo, which was mainly UN-led, and arguably Gulf War I, which involved cooperation from pretty much the entire world); and in this case, the underlying motivations were not to "stand up to a bully" as you describe it, but to liquidate a former asset who had subsequently proven inconvenient.
If you look at the history of American military interventions, when they relate to non-Western countries (i.e. not Europe or Japan, which thanks to the events of the Meiji restoration, wound up being more like a European power than anything else), they have historically done nothing but encourage the self-interest of a global American military empire. I believe that such an entity is bad news for all involved, because it promotes regional instability (by propping up convenient dictators), radicalizes the people opposed to our policies (e.g. Osama bin Laden), overwrites democracy when we aren't fans of the popular choice, and generally creates more bullies than it cures (not to mention leaving local populations dependent on us instead of being able to stand up for themselves). To add to which, American intervention stunts the development of the UN, the correct entity for interventions, and denies nations the opportunity to develop ways to cooperate.
While it feels all warm and fuzzy to think that American intervention has made the world a happier place, the world does not need a self-appointed policeman (contrary to the assertions of nearly every president since TR), particularly one who regulates mainly in his own interest. Given our penchant for making things worse, I think we should generally remain uninvolved aside from offering advice, moral guidance, negotiation/brokering services, and explicit alliances in certain cases. (Acting as part of the UN in peacekeeping missions would be acceptable, because the need is more urgent and the political results usually less disastrous; and material support for domestic rebellions might be an acceptable thing, but we're on sketchy ground depending on who we support -- remember the Contras?)
As for standing up to "bullies," by which I suppose you mean a combination of aggressive leaders and tyrants -- someone should do it, but it should be someone local. I don't know of any historical revolutions that were both successful, and initiated by someone outside the revolting society; failed external revolutions only strengthen the tyrant's position, and even if one were successful, how is a society going to develop a stable democracy when its people don't even have enough organization to kick out their own dictators? From the "aggressive leaders" or "bad neighbors" angle, the fact is that there's too many bullies out there for us to stand up to all of them, or even most of them. A better alternative to cherry-picked US intervention is regional alliance systems that reject unilateral aggression, but again for this to work you need international cooperation, not a Big Daddy.
Iraq "knocked the books" out of Kuwait's hands. Because Saddam thought he'd gotten the OK to do so.
Iraq "knocked the books" out of Iran's hands. With our earnest support.
Iraq "knocked the books" out of the Kurd's hands. with chemical weapons we sold him! With our own endorsement! And if you really want to talk about the Kurds, why is it that there was never any "Kurds get to be independent" plan on the table for the postwar reconstruction? Oh right, because we're too busy supporting Turkey, who keeps "knocking the books" out of their hands in its southern regions.
Are you against people standing up to bullies on other people's behalf? When the result is a royal clusterf***, yes; but I think a better beginning would be to stop standing behind the bully with our arms crossed, sneering at the victim.
Never mind the rest of your comment.
I just thought 9/11 was carte blanche for the USA to clean house of all of its enemies in the middle east. Then you seriously need to learn to tell your friends from your enemies. Saddam was on the friends list the whole way through. The only thing he ever did to annoy us was invade Kuwait, and he wouldn't have done that except he thought he'd gotten the green light. (Of course, once you're at war with the entire world, it's too late to say you're sorry.) The rest of the time he was just like any of the other anti-communist dictators we've supported over the years, just unusually genocidal. He was such a lapdog that even in 2/03 he was bending over backwards trying to comply with Bush's requests so he wouldn't be invaded. And incidentally, it's a terrible idea to start a shooting war without any clue about the local conditions. Getting attacked by radical Islamists and responding by taking out their arch-enemy, the leader of the most secular state in the Middle East, is kind of a foreign policy faux pas.
For those uninclined to read the article hereby linked, it's two quotes. One's from Max Boot, arguing that "everybody does it, so why should the Times complain about this one? Oh yeah, because the Bush administration is bravely trying to break the party line of those Evil Liberal Media Conspirators!" and John Podhoretz saying "Nothing to see here, move along." (A further link points to an article talking about how wrong the Times was to have broken the story about the illegal domestic wiretap program).
What neither one acknowledges is that, even if it is "no secret that [the whole government] tries to influence their coverage by carefully doling out access," it remains DETRIMENTAL TO DEMOCRACY to do so! A Cheneyesque "So?" from neocon commentators fails to excuse the MSM's faults in not aggressively seeking out the actual truth. It is always relevant that a supposedly "neutral" or "objective" commentator has a financial interest in the events he is interpreting.
This is a prime example of what Manufacturing Consent was talking about.
The Open Source community could build something that would make a real difference in the developing world --
if we stopped dicking around with laptops and started collaborating on high-yield, low-input agricultural methods, water reclamation systems, sanitation, and low-conventional-energy devices generally. Great examples: the discovery that pouring water through silk provides enough filtration to substantially reduce the incidence of cholera; the development of solar cooking technologies to help stop deforestation and prevent women from having to gather firewood alone in regions with prevalent rape gangs. THAT is the kind of tech that we should be working on collaboratively. Though there isn't any Linux involved.
OLPC is a great idea, but it doesn't actually address the real problems of the developing world--which aren't web browsing, intuitive programming, and videoconferencing, but security, environmental repair, and conventional-energy-independent development! All this talktalk about laptops has always been the well-meaning but sorely out of touch "help" provided by people who know tons about OSS but have no idea what people in developing countries really need.
the fact remains that as an American citizen not engaged in illegal warfare (the Geneva Conventions also apply to them -- and the conventions say that troops have to fight in uniform, among other things) my Government can't hold me without charging me and making a case beyond a reasonable doubt. Tell that to Jose Padilla.
American rights abuses have been much more limited than Chinese ones. There are recent precedents which suggest that we could, in principle, be treated like the Chinese citizens, but thankfully we're still a long way off from it in practice. Your shouting buddy is arguing on principle from the precedent, while you're arguing from practice, so you're both right.
I think you're confusing moral authority with authority.
In a separate thread on this same article, I had a Chinese apologist tell me that that same source of authority was why China should occupy Tibet. I don't think it's adequate grounds--not there, nor here.
I would also draw a distinction between power and authority. The power to compel me to do something doesn't equate to authority over me. Authority is respectful obedience, and it is a gift from the obedient to those who have earned it. If you disagree, try being a bad manager, and still getting your way when the big boss isn't looking.
You're absolutely right about the flaw in my argument -- although I suppose one could still be a prescriptive moral relativist by restricting the maxim of non-intervention to those who already agreed with it! But that's pretty transparent sophistry.
But failing that option... I think that's why you and I have never met a real prescriptive moral relativist - it's not a coherent position that anyone can hold. Precisely so, I suspect -- "prescriptive" and "moral relativist" simply aren't properties that play nicely together. The people I've met who've come closest to being prescriptive moral relativists are following some version of the cop-out I dismissed at the beginning of this post, since they seem to apply it mainly as a reason that Western civilizations should decline to intervene in the affairs of non-Western nations, but not really anywhere else. The perceived double standard might be perfectly in line with an authentic moral relativism (if it believes in morality but declines to assert the existence of universal maxims) but it's still more in line with the "peculiar moral racism" idea you submitted a few posts ago though; certainly not something that could easily be done coherently.
In any event:
unless we want to reclassify all forms of universalism where permissibility is dependent on a variable as "relativism", in which case liberalism is a form of relativism too. This is precisely the turn that many commentators (including the great...great-grandparent) make -- "moral relativism" has become a convenient accusation pointed at permissive/tolerant universalisms by less permissive ones, to the extent that it's become a sign without a referent. But it's such a *useful* label, whether it means anything or not...
Universalists are nothing like nihilists; relativists are. Actually it's an orthogonal point. A moral nihilist believes morality doesn't exist. That does not prevent such a person from making choices and sincerely believing in them, and enforcing them on others, too -- let's take enforcing freedom of the press in Iran through military intervention. One can do that just as easily as a moral nihilist as one can as a (liberal) moral universalist; the universalist just has the pretension of applying a universal moral truth, while the nihilist is expressing a personal preference to which abstract ideas of "right" and "wrong" are irrelevant. The prescriptive moral relativist can't do this, because he theorizes a morality which is subject to local popular opinion and which it would be wrong to replace. Thus, at least in this example, the nihilist and the universalist are closer to each other, in terms of permitted actions, than either is to the relativist. (Whether that realm of similarities holds generally would depend on what beliefs/preferences the nihilist holds, and what kind of universalist we're talking about).
Anyway, you've written a great summary, though I must point out that my original point was to respond to the generic, soft-headed assertion that liberal moral universalism, coupled with the trivially-obvious point that points of view are diverse and we should learn from them, equates to prescriptive moral relativism. In the real world, I've met tons and tons of descriptive moral relativists/prescriptive liberal universalists willing to consider moral critiques coming from unfamiliar moral systems, but I've never met any real prescriptive relativists. In the world Sean Hannity rants about, on the other hand, belief in tolerance seems to be a sign of a degenerate prescriptive relativism infecting half of American society... which I suppose sells books, but doesn't really use terms very consistently, does it?
Yes, he's written an excellent summary of the relevant philosophical positions. However, I think that you'll find that in the Real World (and not the bogeyman world harped on by movement conservatism -- whence the cheap shot about "destroying freedom"), people generally are descriptive moral relativists, not prescriptive ones. That was my original point: the post to which I replied was assuming that descriptive moral relativists are actually prescriptive moral relativists. (And apparently showed the common, dumb, belief that acknowledging legitimate criticism of one's own moral position, when that criticism comes from someone with a different moral system, necessarily implies either an endorsement of the other moral system or the view that all moral systems are equally valid and we can't judge between them.)
For the record, I'm a moral nihilist. I have moral beliefs, which are effective guides to my action and (I believe) would be good guides to the actions of others, and I am willing to take strong action to support what I think is right; but I deny the pretension that Morality exists in some kind of abstract sense as a part or property of the universe, or that my beliefs are "about" something external and real. People's beliefs about morality are social constructs which can only be analyzed descriptively, not as something that points to a True Morality; such systems can shape the preferences of individuals (constructed != nonexistent), but an individual moral decision is an expression of personal preference, not a universal rule. I suspect that my moral preferences themselves hew pretty close to Pfhorrest's, but when I give the alternatives as "live and let live" or a specific-universalist morality, I'm stating the logical alternatives, not generating a moral maxim. I don't specific-universalists are doing something Morally Wrong in a universal sense; I think they're doing something that undermines the freedom of conscience which I highly value; and because I value freedom of conscience and see them oppressing it, I think they should be stopped.
It's like atheism -- one does not believe that "all gods are equal," one simply acknowledges that most people have various systems of beliefs about gods, even though there's no "there" there. One can be an atheist and still be firmly committed to (e.g.) Judaism as a social practice, or still be tolerant of certain religions and less so of others.
I replied originally because I'm sick of people describing me as a moral relativist, however, or confusing the (ought-to-be-but-sadly-often-isn't-to-a-particular-subset-of-American-political-partisans) trivially obvious point about descriptive moral relativism with an endorsement of prescriptive moral relativism. Prescriptive moral relativism would involve active belief in non-interference with other moral systems. I simply acknowledge that my moral choices are nothing more than that, my choices -- but they're nothing less; they are still to be forcefully advocated for and upheld. I believe Iran's media censorship is oppressive and should be condemned by the international community, and bypassed or overthrown if possible; this is what I think, not what is universally True, but I really do think it! Morality doesn't exist outside the heads of individual moral agents, but individuals still make choices (even if there's nothing for them to be "about" in a moral sense). But the post to which I'd originally replied asserted that the position for which my own is mistaken is cowardice; I say if you pick up a gun for Free France, you're just as brave if you do it from a universal belief as if you do it because it is just your personal choice.
Incidentally, while I'm not a formal philosophy student (can't stand the blather), Kant's deontology is self-absorbed sophistry. To the extent that an action generates a moral maxim, it must generate a moral maxim specific to the situation; that moral maxim must necessarily be sufficiently limited in scope to describe only the relevant choice, thus rendering it meaningless.
And agreed that Sino-US war would be very, very messy in Luzon. By which of course I mean Manila. Since you refer to countries by their capitals, not their big islands.
You know, that's a really good point. That just might be enough to sweeten the pot. I don't know if there are other interests going on that might keep the US from proposing such a thing, but that just might work.
(Personally, since I want to see actual, internationally-recognized, stable Taiwanese independence, this wouldn't be my preferred option, but something along these lines might be exactly what it would take to resolve the Tibet situation.)
And agreed that Sino-US war would be very, very messy in Luzon. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. (Well, you know, if we were to send in the couple thousand troops that aren't still in Iraq and Afghanistan).
Looks like the argument is "the government should be more involved in actually doing something." This is undoubtedly true; it's the government's job to set safety standards and to fight crime.
But really this is just an article that says "Hey, why not have the government fight crime?" with nautical window dressing. The author's better off scuttling the piracy angle.
Appeals to conscience do not equal making someone realize that something is not in their self-interest.
If I ask you not to steal a cookie, I'm appealing to your conscience (without changing your self-interest one bit). If I point a gun at your head, I'm prompting you to readjust your evaluation of your self-interest.
I don't think the "direct threat" approach is going to work with China in this circumstance, since the system appears able to absorb that kind of attack, but if we can make Tibet a liability in some other way (economically perhaps? Maybe a ban or tariff specifically on goods produced on Tibetan lands by non-ethnic-Tibetans? etc.) then the CCP might back off from it.
India didn't become free by guilting the British into leaving; it became free by refusing to cooperate with the British war effort in WWII, and by taking advantage of the incredible weakness in Brtain after the war.
...dude. If you're going to use the Yuan claims over Tibet as an argument that modern-day China should rule there, then you might as well be claiming that Afghanistan ought to be part of China as well... or perhaps you're arguing that Tibet, China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and most of Russia are really part of Mongolia?
The relationship of Tibet to the Qing empire is much more complex than what you're saying. It was more of a vassal state than a part of the country -- the Dalai Lama at the time paid deference to the Qing emperor (but hey, so did Korea and Japan), and in return was granted spiritual authority over all of China, in return for acknowledging the emperor's (limited) political authority. Do you really think the China-Tibet relationship should go back to those terms?
And anyway, most of northern China spent a long time under the rule of the Jurchens -- surely that doesn't mean they still have a claim over that area?
The "stealing from the store" example is closer, but it's really more like this:
You took a cookie from the cookie jar last week. Since then you feel bad about it. I take a cookie from the jar today. And now you tell me I shouldn't do that, because you felt bad.
So far, we agree. The difference is that you appear to be surprised that I might say "Oh, now that you got your cookie it's wrong for me to take one? Get bent!"
I'm saying that if we actually care about Tibet, instead of just wanking over How Bad China Is, we'd better anticipate that reaction and start saying something more like "Get your hand out of that jar or all the other kids in the class won't play with you at recess." Even that will probably just be co-opted into that "the West is trying to undermine us, we must continue the oppression!" mindset -- it's very powerful, that. But if we want to see change we have to change their understanding of their self-interest.
[The only thing you can do] is appeal to people's conscience
that's the only thing you ever could do, or ever can do
its not some sort of weird game to figure out what motivates people. that's easy: self-interest is what motivates people. duh Fine, but the Chinese DO NOT CARE about your appeals to conscience, given their view of their self-interest. So if that's really all we can do, then the Tibetans are screwed. Personally, I'd like to try something other than appeals to conscience before we just shrug and give up.
you believe that if you study chinese culture and chinese point of view for 10 years you will arrive at some magic set of words that if you say to the chinese they will suddenly go "oh yeah, this is wrong, we'll stop it" No. I believe that we can find some magic set of ACTIONS that will make China realize continued oppression of Tibet is not in its self-interest. I haven't figured out yet what it is -- like I said above, sanctions by themselves wouldn't change minds; my bet is that pushing for more government openness and public debate will eventually do the trick, though that could be way off base too -- but the choice you're offering is "Be a hypocritical scold that no one will listen to." Pardon me for thinking the odds of that succeeding are low.
to excuse [Han imperialism] and [violent Muslim fundamentalism] because of [North American Native genocide] and [the Crusades] is i don't know exactly what, but its not morality or intellectual honesty. its some sort of weird kind of attempt to avoid a human conscience Um, could it perhaps be "an attempt to explain the behavior of people who ignore the West?"
Look, the point isn't "Oh, we're hypocrites, let's go wring our hands melodramatically." It's "WE'RE HYPOCRITES! OF COURSE THEY'RE IGNORING US! DID YOU EXPECT THIS TACTIC TO WORK!? Let's try something else!"
If we want to get anywhere, other than pooh-poohing China's reprehensible actions towards Tibet (and Taiwan), we have to acknowledge what the common Chinese belief is, and respond accordingly. Anything else (like Richard Gere's stunt on the Oscars a few years back) is just feel-good grandstanding that the Chinese will reject out of hand.
I don't know how to stop people from doing something they view in their own self-interest and have no shame whatsoever about. How would England have stopped Spanish colonization of the New World in 1500? But I know that a lot of foreigners waving their arms in the air isn't going to convince the Han that their race and culture don't deserve to be spread all over the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait... I'm confused. How do I add a free article? And why am I supposed to be adding content?
Ditto for whether Sadaam's current rule qualifies as an imminent emergency -- he certainly didn't do much during the 90s to justify our response in 2003. I agree that international intervention was needed during Gulf War I -- and that's exactly what happened, with pretty much everybody coming to the party. Once the status quo ante was restored, everybody backed off -- probably the right decision, although the subsequent sanctions regime turned out not to be gracefully handled. Where does trillions of dollars of debt and the lose of much global good-will fit into America's self interests? Empires colonize for profits. Hey, nobody said Bush was doing a good job of empire-building either! But establishing a permanent military presence throughout the world has been a fixed goal for the last fifty-sixty years of American policy. We still haven't given back those bases in Germany, or Japan, or Korea, etc., and arms deals and military patronage arrangements have had a considerable influence in the local politics of most parts of the globe (incl. those Saudi Arabian bases that prompted ObL to go all jihad-happy). See The Sorrows of Empire and Blowback (Chalmers Johnson) for further discussion.
For the UN itself, well... what can you say about an organization that's chartered such that every major stakeholder has veto power? Oops... But the sad news is that basically nobody has a very good record of shutting down genocides. Perhaps "regional alliances" would have been a better choice of entities -- I'm thinking NATO in Bosnia -- but still, the point is there needs to be an international-cooperation model to establish legitimacy and avoid the temptation for a military power grab, incl. permanent bases and land cessions, because the power grab will have blowback.
So basically, my perspective is that unilateral intervention is sufficiently inferior to broad cooperative intervention that doing nothing is likely the better option, save in cases of genocide (which Sadaam wasn't actively engaged in any more). Ultimately most of the sectarian fighting is about who gets the oil money, so that was probably going to be a disaster regardless; I would turn Hitchens' question around and ask if the trillions spent and thousands of (coalition) lives lost have helped things enough to be worthwhile. Ignoring motives etc. but accepting the screwups as they've foreseeably occurred, are we getting good value for our blood and treasure? Would it have been substantially worse for Iraqis if it were just the Turks and the Iranians getting their boys blown up instead of us? It'll likely always be an open question--stupid lack of a control Earth. Makes history so much more difficult.
Sure, I think I can clarify that for you.
I was opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning, because I knew we were going to screw it up. That is the history of every military intervention we've had since WWII (with the exception of Kosovo, which was mainly UN-led, and arguably Gulf War I, which involved cooperation from pretty much the entire world); and in this case, the underlying motivations were not to "stand up to a bully" as you describe it, but to liquidate a former asset who had subsequently proven inconvenient.
If you look at the history of American military interventions, when they relate to non-Western countries (i.e. not Europe or Japan, which thanks to the events of the Meiji restoration, wound up being more like a European power than anything else), they have historically done nothing but encourage the self-interest of a global American military empire. I believe that such an entity is bad news for all involved, because it promotes regional instability (by propping up convenient dictators), radicalizes the people opposed to our policies (e.g. Osama bin Laden), overwrites democracy when we aren't fans of the popular choice, and generally creates more bullies than it cures (not to mention leaving local populations dependent on us instead of being able to stand up for themselves). To add to which, American intervention stunts the development of the UN, the correct entity for interventions, and denies nations the opportunity to develop ways to cooperate.
While it feels all warm and fuzzy to think that American intervention has made the world a happier place, the world does not need a self-appointed policeman (contrary to the assertions of nearly every president since TR), particularly one who regulates mainly in his own interest. Given our penchant for making things worse, I think we should generally remain uninvolved aside from offering advice, moral guidance, negotiation/brokering services, and explicit alliances in certain cases. (Acting as part of the UN in peacekeeping missions would be acceptable, because the need is more urgent and the political results usually less disastrous; and material support for domestic rebellions might be an acceptable thing, but we're on sketchy ground depending on who we support -- remember the Contras?)
As for standing up to "bullies," by which I suppose you mean a combination of aggressive leaders and tyrants -- someone should do it, but it should be someone local. I don't know of any historical revolutions that were both successful, and initiated by someone outside the revolting society; failed external revolutions only strengthen the tyrant's position, and even if one were successful, how is a society going to develop a stable democracy when its people don't even have enough organization to kick out their own dictators? From the "aggressive leaders" or "bad neighbors" angle, the fact is that there's too many bullies out there for us to stand up to all of them, or even most of them. A better alternative to cherry-picked US intervention is regional alliance systems that reject unilateral aggression, but again for this to work you need international cooperation, not a Big Daddy.
And incidentally, it's a terrible idea to start a shooting war without any clue about the local conditions. Getting attacked by radical Islamists and responding by taking out their arch-enemy, the leader of the most secular state in the Middle East, is kind of a foreign policy faux pas.
And you assume that the government doesn't view independent-thinking citizens are its enemies because...?
Nice. Wish I had mod points.
For those uninclined to read the article hereby linked, it's two quotes. One's from Max Boot, arguing that "everybody does it, so why should the Times complain about this one? Oh yeah, because the Bush administration is bravely trying to break the party line of those Evil Liberal Media Conspirators!" and John Podhoretz saying "Nothing to see here, move along." (A further link points to an article talking about how wrong the Times was to have broken the story about the illegal domestic wiretap program).
What neither one acknowledges is that, even if it is "no secret that [the whole government] tries to influence their coverage by carefully doling out access," it remains DETRIMENTAL TO DEMOCRACY to do so! A Cheneyesque "So?" from neocon commentators fails to excuse the MSM's faults in not aggressively seeking out the actual truth. It is always relevant that a supposedly "neutral" or "objective" commentator has a financial interest in the events he is interpreting.
This is a prime example of what Manufacturing Consent was talking about.
...and bury it in the desert.
It's the only thing that's worked in the past (though far from 100%).
It'll be even lower than 5% once they publish this and I reprint a knockoff version for sale at half the price!
The Open Source community could build something that would make a real difference in the developing world --
if we stopped dicking around with laptops and started collaborating on high-yield, low-input agricultural methods, water reclamation systems, sanitation, and low-conventional-energy devices generally. Great examples: the discovery that pouring water through silk provides enough filtration to substantially reduce the incidence of cholera; the development of solar cooking technologies to help stop deforestation and prevent women from having to gather firewood alone in regions with prevalent rape gangs.
THAT is the kind of tech that we should be working on collaboratively. Though there isn't any Linux involved.
OLPC is a great idea, but it doesn't actually address the real problems of the developing world--which aren't web browsing, intuitive programming, and videoconferencing, but security, environmental repair, and conventional-energy-independent development! All this talktalk about laptops has always been the well-meaning but sorely out of touch "help" provided by people who know tons about OSS but have no idea what people in developing countries really need.
American rights abuses have been much more limited than Chinese ones. There are recent precedents which suggest that we could, in principle, be treated like the Chinese citizens, but thankfully we're still a long way off from it in practice. Your shouting buddy is arguing on principle from the precedent, while you're arguing from practice, so you're both right.
I think you're confusing moral authority with authority.
In a separate thread on this same article, I had a Chinese apologist tell me that that same source of authority was why China should occupy Tibet. I don't think it's adequate grounds--not there, nor here.
I would also draw a distinction between power and authority. The power to compel me to do something doesn't equate to authority over me. Authority is respectful obedience, and it is a gift from the obedient to those who have earned it. If you disagree, try being a bad manager, and still getting your way when the big boss isn't looking.
In any event: unless we want to reclassify all forms of universalism where permissibility is dependent on a variable as "relativism", in which case liberalism is a form of relativism too. This is precisely the turn that many commentators (including the great...great-grandparent) make -- "moral relativism" has become a convenient accusation pointed at permissive/tolerant universalisms by less permissive ones, to the extent that it's become a sign without a referent. But it's such a *useful* label, whether it means anything or not...
You know, this could be a pretty exciting movie plot.
Or at least an episode of Battlestar: Galactica or something.
Anyway, you've written a great summary, though I must point out that my original point was to respond to the generic, soft-headed assertion that liberal moral universalism, coupled with the trivially-obvious point that points of view are diverse and we should learn from them, equates to prescriptive moral relativism. In the real world, I've met tons and tons of descriptive moral relativists/prescriptive liberal universalists willing to consider moral critiques coming from unfamiliar moral systems, but I've never met any real prescriptive relativists. In the world Sean Hannity rants about, on the other hand, belief in tolerance seems to be a sign of a degenerate prescriptive relativism infecting half of American society... which I suppose sells books, but doesn't really use terms very consistently, does it?
Yes, he's written an excellent summary of the relevant philosophical positions. However, I think that you'll find that in the Real World (and not the bogeyman world harped on by movement conservatism -- whence the cheap shot about "destroying freedom"), people generally are descriptive moral relativists, not prescriptive ones. That was my original point: the post to which I replied was assuming that descriptive moral relativists are actually prescriptive moral relativists. (And apparently showed the common, dumb, belief that acknowledging legitimate criticism of one's own moral position, when that criticism comes from someone with a different moral system, necessarily implies either an endorsement of the other moral system or the view that all moral systems are equally valid and we can't judge between them.)
For the record, I'm a moral nihilist. I have moral beliefs, which are effective guides to my action and (I believe) would be good guides to the actions of others, and I am willing to take strong action to support what I think is right; but I deny the pretension that Morality exists in some kind of abstract sense as a part or property of the universe, or that my beliefs are "about" something external and real. People's beliefs about morality are social constructs which can only be analyzed descriptively, not as something that points to a True Morality; such systems can shape the preferences of individuals (constructed != nonexistent), but an individual moral decision is an expression of personal preference, not a universal rule. I suspect that my moral preferences themselves hew pretty close to Pfhorrest's, but when I give the alternatives as "live and let live" or a specific-universalist morality, I'm stating the logical alternatives, not generating a moral maxim. I don't specific-universalists are doing something Morally Wrong in a universal sense; I think they're doing something that undermines the freedom of conscience which I highly value; and because I value freedom of conscience and see them oppressing it, I think they should be stopped.
It's like atheism -- one does not believe that "all gods are equal," one simply acknowledges that most people have various systems of beliefs about gods, even though there's no "there" there. One can be an atheist and still be firmly committed to (e.g.) Judaism as a social practice, or still be tolerant of certain religions and less so of others.
I replied originally because I'm sick of people describing me as a moral relativist, however, or confusing the (ought-to-be-but-sadly-often-isn't-to-a-particular-subset-of-American-political-partisans) trivially obvious point about descriptive moral relativism with an endorsement of prescriptive moral relativism. Prescriptive moral relativism would involve active belief in non-interference with other moral systems. I simply acknowledge that my moral choices are nothing more than that, my choices -- but they're nothing less; they are still to be forcefully advocated for and upheld. I believe Iran's media censorship is oppressive and should be condemned by the international community, and bypassed or overthrown if possible; this is what I think, not what is universally True, but I really do think it! Morality doesn't exist outside the heads of individual moral agents, but individuals still make choices (even if there's nothing for them to be "about" in a moral sense). But the post to which I'd originally replied asserted that the position for which my own is mistaken is cowardice; I say if you pick up a gun for Free France, you're just as brave if you do it from a universal belief as if you do it because it is just your personal choice.
Incidentally, while I'm not a formal philosophy student (can't stand the blather), Kant's deontology is self-absorbed sophistry. To the extent that an action generates a moral maxim, it must generate a moral maxim specific to the situation; that moral maxim must necessarily be sufficiently limited in scope to describe only the relevant choice, thus rendering it meaningless.
Anyway, enough talk. Enjoy your day!
Sorry, it's been a long week.
You know, that's a really good point. That just might be enough to sweeten the pot. I don't know if there are other interests going on that might keep the US from proposing such a thing, but that just might work.
(Personally, since I want to see actual, internationally-recognized, stable Taiwanese independence, this wouldn't be my preferred option, but something along these lines might be exactly what it would take to resolve the Tibet situation.)
And agreed that Sino-US war would be very, very messy in Luzon. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. (Well, you know, if we were to send in the couple thousand troops that aren't still in Iraq and Afghanistan).
...now we have bad boat analogies. Great.
Looks like the argument is "the government should be more involved in actually doing something." This is undoubtedly true; it's the government's job to set safety standards and to fight crime.
But really this is just an article that says "Hey, why not have the government fight crime?" with nautical window dressing. The author's better off scuttling the piracy angle.
Appeals to conscience do not equal making someone realize that something is not in their self-interest.
If I ask you not to steal a cookie, I'm appealing to your conscience (without changing your self-interest one bit). If I point a gun at your head, I'm prompting you to readjust your evaluation of your self-interest.
I don't think the "direct threat" approach is going to work with China in this circumstance, since the system appears able to absorb that kind of attack, but if we can make Tibet a liability in some other way (economically perhaps? Maybe a ban or tariff specifically on goods produced on Tibetan lands by non-ethnic-Tibetans? etc.) then the CCP might back off from it.
India didn't become free by guilting the British into leaving; it became free by refusing to cooperate with the British war effort in WWII, and by taking advantage of the incredible weakness in Brtain after the war.
...dude.
If you're going to use the Yuan claims over Tibet as an argument that modern-day China should rule there, then you might as well be claiming that Afghanistan ought to be part of China as well... or perhaps you're arguing that Tibet, China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and most of Russia are really part of Mongolia?
The relationship of Tibet to the Qing empire is much more complex than what you're saying. It was more of a vassal state than a part of the country -- the Dalai Lama at the time paid deference to the Qing emperor (but hey, so did Korea and Japan), and in return was granted spiritual authority over all of China, in return for acknowledging the emperor's (limited) political authority. Do you really think the China-Tibet relationship should go back to those terms?
And anyway, most of northern China spent a long time under the rule of the Jurchens -- surely that doesn't mean they still have a claim over that area?
The "stealing from the store" example is closer, but it's really more like this:
You took a cookie from the cookie jar last week. Since then you feel bad about it.
I take a cookie from the jar today. And now you tell me I shouldn't do that, because you felt bad.
So far, we agree. The difference is that you appear to be surprised that I might say "Oh, now that you got your cookie it's wrong for me to take one? Get bent!"
I'm saying that if we actually care about Tibet, instead of just wanking over How Bad China Is, we'd better anticipate that reaction and start saying something more like "Get your hand out of that jar or all the other kids in the class won't play with you at recess." Even that will probably just be co-opted into that "the West is trying to undermine us, we must continue the oppression!" mindset -- it's very powerful, that. But if we want to see change we have to change their understanding of their self-interest. [The only thing you can do] is appeal to people's conscience
that's the only thing you ever could do, or ever can do
its not some sort of weird game to figure out what motivates people. that's easy: self-interest is what motivates people. duh Fine, but the Chinese DO NOT CARE about your appeals to conscience, given their view of their self-interest. So if that's really all we can do, then the Tibetans are screwed. Personally, I'd like to try something other than appeals to conscience before we just shrug and give up. you believe that if you study chinese culture and chinese point of view for 10 years you will arrive at some magic set of words that if you say to the chinese they will suddenly go "oh yeah, this is wrong, we'll stop it" No. I believe that we can find some magic set of ACTIONS that will make China realize continued oppression of Tibet is not in its self-interest. I haven't figured out yet what it is -- like I said above, sanctions by themselves wouldn't change minds; my bet is that pushing for more government openness and public debate will eventually do the trick, though that could be way off base too -- but the choice you're offering is "Be a hypocritical scold that no one will listen to." Pardon me for thinking the odds of that succeeding are low.
Look, the point isn't "Oh, we're hypocrites, let's go wring our hands melodramatically." It's "WE'RE HYPOCRITES! OF COURSE THEY'RE IGNORING US! DID YOU EXPECT THIS TACTIC TO WORK!? Let's try something else!"
If we want to get anywhere, other than pooh-poohing China's reprehensible actions towards Tibet (and Taiwan), we have to acknowledge what the common Chinese belief is, and respond accordingly. Anything else (like Richard Gere's stunt on the Oscars a few years back) is just feel-good grandstanding that the Chinese will reject out of hand.
I don't know how to stop people from doing something they view in their own self-interest and have no shame whatsoever about. How would England have stopped Spanish colonization of the New World in 1500? But I know that a lot of foreigners waving their arms in the air isn't going to convince the Han that their race and culture don't deserve to be spread all over the world.