I'm a pragmatist. I don't believe taht there are _any_ necessary moves.
The set of possible institutional formations for securing
>obligation includes non-State social formations. So your argument for
>liberal democracy can be used
>for other social formations that secure even greater scope for liberties.
>This would make your
>approach a little tougher to justify.
>
But there aren't any feasible alternatives that we know of. The question is idle.
>
>
>Again fair enough; so why should anyone use moral discourse at all in the
>process of collective
>deliberation/action to secure majoritarian goals?
Because it's sojmetimes effective.
And does that not present problems for minorities
>using moral discourse that lose out to majorities that eschew moral
>discourse altogether so that
>moral discourse is a chimera?
Don't understand your point. Unless it is, sometimes moeral discourse doesn't work, which is true. Then you have to use something else.
>>
>Again we're back to Carrol's point and the issue of anti-moral[ism]
>discourse and what, if anything,
>renders moral discourse necessary for inuargurating or constrain
>majoritarian formations to achieve
>social goals, no?
Nothing renders it necessary. Experience shows that sometimes it is useful and effective. See Dr. King, for example.
>Well your model still doesn't explicate or defend the nice clean
>demarcation of liberalism and
>majoritarianism you wish for when that very demarcation is to be decided
>upon via majoritarian
>methods or not.
We start where we are, and the line is contested. Even if I had a perfect clean philosophical proof, it would still be contested. Where we are is the liberal democracy that we have won in struggle.
So it seems you want objective morality, whose truth is immune to
majoritarianism to
>fall back on to say when the majority "violates liberalism."
Not at all. My defense of liberalism is political. I have a moral defense of it, but I don't expect it to be widely shared. The political defense of it is that it is the lowest common denominator way of resolving our differences and making decisions on terms of more less mutual respect in a society where there is and can be no agreement ob fundamentals.
>The WOD is the war on drugs. You seem to be showing that double standard
>again; you don't want or
>feel the need to use moral discourse to defend or allow prostitution but
>you want to be able to use
>moral discourse to show a majority opposition they're wrong when they use a
>non-moral or conflicting
>moral discourse to mobilize and defeat a position a minority holds when you
>think the outcome is
>wrong or leads to something horrible.
Yes, but what's the double standard? Why should I foreswear a perfectly good rhetorical strategy taht is sometimes useful as long as I don't insist too hard that those whose disagree with my moral views are vipers who should be exterminated?
>
> > Democracy is prior to philosophy and other sorts of theory.
> >
> > jks
> >
>===================
>
>This is patently false in historical terms
What do you mean, that democratic theory came first? But I am not talking about temporal priority. I mean practical priority. If you come up with a knockdown disproof of democracy--arguably that is what Arrow did--we'll laugh and keep on voting and bargaining.
and as incapable of demonstrable proof as the claim that
>ontology is prior to epistemology and vice versa and physics is prior to
>both and mathematics is
>prior to physics. What was it WVOQ said "there is no 1st philosophy" or
>some such.
Right. Democracy is practice, not philosophy. I don't care about proving the point. It's obviously true in the sense that it's justified the way any belief without express justification as long as serious grounds of doubt do not arise. They haven't. You happen toa gree with me, practically speaking.
>
>To paraphrase Deidre McCloskey, this is all blackboard political
>philosophy.............
>
Quite right. And I'm talking real world politics.
jks
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