>Getting to the issue of legitimacy inevitably implies some form of
>omniscient normative rationality - a position that I deliberately tried to
>avoid. More preceisely, you can call someone a bigot only if you assume an
>omniscient knowledge of what that person means by doing and saying certain
>things (a position that is typically implied by rat-choice theorists).
There is no transcendental meaning to the word "bigot." We have only historically defined meanings of this or any other word, changed through the course of struggles. So, calling someone a "bigot" doesn't at all imply an "omniscient knowledge of what that person means." You only need to be part of history to take part in the meaning-making. What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational, as Hegel said; omniscience doesn't exist in the actual -- it's only a fancy of theologians. Radical relativists are the only believers -- aside from theologians -- in setting the bar of effective knowledge so high. That is because only by setting the impossible standard to meet can they reduce all knowledges to "equal failures," so to speak. Here, your rhetoric is reminiscent of Kenneth Mackendrick's: "Ethics isn't about 'doing the right thing.' It's about *failure* to do the right thing, because the right thing in the wrong world is impossible." We are not interested in "perfect" knowledge, "perfect" morality, etc.; we, however, still want to do *better*, don't we?
Anyhow, your truth claim deconstructs itself, as it were: "Au countraire, as previously argued, I specifically argued against any claims to superior rationality (in fact, the vanguard party position is a reformulation of the old Catholic dogma of papal infallibility)" (Wojtek). Your truth claim is a victim of your own rhetoric of radical skepticism, and we have no reason to think what you say is any better than anyone else's opinion here, *according to your own logic*.
Wojtek also wrote: "IMHO, exorcisms and condemnations are like prayers - they give you an illusion that you control things while taking away the means of understanding and factual control." I agree with you here to a certain extent, but to make this claim, one actually needs objectivity. Otherwise, all speeches -- not just exorcisms and condemnations -- are "like prayers" (a notion no doubt appealing to late modern theologians).
Yoshie
P.S. Now we are very far away from Carrol's question of cops and unions. Can we ever get back to it, I wonder?