Miscellaneous points today as things seem to be spiralling downhill ever-more-quickly lately...

A question for the Left:

So, how's that 'living' interpretation of the US Constitution working for you, then?

Are you still with Thurgood Marshall's interpretation "...he argued that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the moral, political, and cultural climate of the age of interpretation..." in which changing circumstances allow changing interpretations of inferred language?

I've always been a strict constructionist, for the inimitable (but apocryphal) lesson of Thomas Moore in "A Man for all Seasons":

Quote:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

The Devil is turning, gentlemen. And you quite specifically have been the ones spending the last 30+ years shredding that very Document, that Creation of Man, that could have protected us.

_______

Re California's letter to Bitcoin demanding they cease operation or face aggressive prosecution for money-transmission without proper licensing/approval:

Dear Bitcoin:

We are uncomfortable that your fiat currency is a) starting to make our fiat currency look a little silly, and b) circumventing our ability to control the public. Please stop or we will have to get rough.

Signed,
California and the Fed

_________

Re Mr Obama's soon-to-be-formally-announced big plans to address Climate Change:

To my public, and in particular former supporters,

Since everything else seems to have gone in the shitter, I come back to you with a message that seemed to sell well in both campaigns: the environment.

I look forward to again gaining your broad support with a campaign of platitudes, anthemic one-word slogans, and statements that make me appear sympathetic to your issues, while actually resulting in policies that either ossify the current corporation-based lobbyist-driven structure, or expand the pervasive control of the Federal government ostensibly for good reasons but which will in fact be used to incrementally decrease your rights vis a vis that "Constitution" thingy, which I will continue to re-interpret as really not relevant to today's realities anyway.

Signed,
Your President.

Ends, means, and certainty.

Holy crud, 2 posts in ONE DAY?
The end DOES justify the means.  It's a foundational concept of LIFE, particularly social organization.
For example, for most people, work sucks.  But they do it, why?
Imprisoning people is fundamentally a mean thing to do, but if someone murders someone else, we put the murderer in jail.  Why?
We CONSTANTLY do unpleasant or unhappy things, because they will ultimately result in better things (or at least good things).

Now, we can argue about the relative merits of ends vs means, but I'm really fecking tired of people claiming that "justifying the method by the result" is somehow inherently morally flawed.

And yes, I understand that I'm invoking Godwin's Law here but also yes, I get it: Himmler no doubt felt he was doing the RIGHT thing as much as we feel we're doing the RIGHT thing fighting terrorism.  Does that make us morally equal?  Ultimately, I find the intellectually-simple shortcut of thereby equating us is intellectually laze and frankly reprehensible.  At some point an adult has to grow up and decide that some things are good and some things are bad, and stop excusing the bad because it might be unpleasant or uncomfortable to fight it.

Personally, I suspect that avoiding moral certainty is based in cowardice: Ultimately, since according to the relativists there is no actual God, there is no ACTUAL moral yardstick; what is "good" is determined by the simple will of the majority around us.  Those afraid to take a stand are afraid they might be wrong, and that the majority will turn on them, so they advocate tolerance of everything to ultimately protect their own ass.

So yes, taking a moral position is *risky*.  It takes some courage to say "THIS is what I believe, and f' you all if you disagree".  But that's being a grownup.

THE GUBBERMINT IS SPYING ON ME.

Rage all you want against the 'terrifying new revelations' about government data collection, this is the INEVITABLE arc of human societies.

I know Toynbee may socio-historically old-fashions, but it seems a never-ending repetitious cycle:  humans scrabble their way out of chaos and savagery, build cohesive societies that take care of basic needs freeing their citizenry to think and dream and grow.  Ultimately, the weight of a society exceeds its carrying capacity (largely through the people's ignorance of how great they have it compared to the alternatives) and everything collapses in anarchy and violence, until some inspired individuals lead the way back out of chaos again.

But we're social animals (emphasis on the latter).  Freedom is HARD; look carefully behind a student's eyes on graduation day, and you'll see a core anxiety "OK WTF do I do NOW with my life?"

(As an aside, I believe that this is the core reason that college is perceived to be so necessary to job-hunters today.  It's not the commonly-ranted "companies are demanding college degrees for everything" complaint, that's confusing cause/effect.  I believe that the comfort-value of a life-on-rails with few meaningful choices has kept people in school longer and longer.  It's simple, lazy, expensive procrastination of "real life" for another 4+ years.  Faced with a ridiculous excess of applicants with college degrees, wouldn't you as a business likewise begin to demand them if only as a first-tier way to weed out candidates who ostensibly have fewer skills?  If you think about it, it's actually contrary to what they should WANT in an employee, and why a thoughtful HR department should consider carefully if they really want degree-holding applicants, if the degree isn't directly pertinent to the job.)

You can see it too if you play a face-to-face roleplaying game with today's teens, they are literally paralyzed with choices, as opposed to the linear games with fixed, obvious options that they're used to from their PC or consoles.

In a couple of moments of startling clarity from an otherwise vapid film:
"Loki: I come with glad tidings of a world made free.
Nick Fury: Free from what?
Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie.
...
Loki: Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

They are lines that are supposed to enrage, of course, to light the righteous indignation in freedom-loving Americans (and in fact it's immediately followed by the formulaic 'defense of the lone guy brave enough to stand up' and Capt America's line "You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."
ANYONE who watches that and doesn't immediately recognize the historical truth of Loki's statement hasn't been paying attention.

As artists have a particularly skillful ability to be succinct (I don't know the artist):

Personally I suspect that freedom on the level of that envisaged by the Founding Fathers is unsustainable, because it demands a broad level of intelligence, education, the leisure to care about things larger than ones' next meal, and the willingness to put in the WORK.  Lying in your hammock isn't freedom, it's the reward of freedom.

Either people are generally too indolent to be willing to work for it (think herd of sheep or cattle, happy to merely have food and get milked/sheared once in a while in exchange for perceived comfort & safety - until the farmer needs meat, but that's in the distant future...), or the governments have figured out that the way to ensure their grip on power is to opiate the masses.  Either way, the masses are largely happy with it and always have been.

So stop your screaming and shouting.  Ecce homo, indeed.

And, if you need a little humor on this subject - the Onion nails it again: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-outraged-his-private-information-being-co,32783/