Even the smartest people make dumb calls. Judge Posner wrote a book about Bush v. Gore, offering the best possible defense of it, you could read it. ANd you don't have to take my word that he's smarter than both of us put together. Everyone of every political persuasion agrees. Hell, if you thought you had an interesting take on the case, he'd talk to you about it for as long as you could keep his attention. Justice Scalia's brilliant too. A total creep, but brilliant.... jks
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I am not sure that being smarter than a wheelchair mechanic with an art degree adds much to a claim of brilliance.
But, here is a question. It seems to meander along an interesting boundary between the rational and the ethical. How smart can you be, if in decisions and actions you take that effect other people's lives, you knowingly do them a greater rather than a lesser harm?
I think much misery follows exactly this proposition---the belief that a few lives can always be tossed for the greater good, thus the corpses of the world follow like water flowing over falls. Judging from the number of such corpses, there seems to be a unlimited supply of greater goods.
Descending to Bush v Gore. Since the outcome was in effect a choice between two meritless mediocrities, then why choose the one the people did not choose? If there is any single maxim of democratic government, it is trust the people. Not because they are right or smart, but because it is their decision to make---and theirs to suffer.
What has flowed from that decision has been terrible. If Bush had the majority popular vote, the court could rest its conscience that for better or worse, it only affirmed the people. But they didn't. They can not rest, because they have done a profound harm and the consequences have continued to follow breathlessly from one disaster to another, reeling us into a nightmare.
In any event, the written decision might be rational, it might be interesting, it might be a lot of other things, but it certainly isn't inspired by ideals of democratic governance. In fact it is much worse, because it mocks all of those principles through its transparently fallacious mask.
Take your choice. They were foolish and petty and unwittingly damaged a core belief of democratic governance or they were smart and therefore did evil. At least I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
``...We took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth, through hitherto we have not been able to complete our work. But whose fault is that? Oh, the work is only beginning, but it has begun. It has long to await completion and the earth has yet much to suffer, but we shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of man...''
(Ivan Karamazov, from the Grand Inquisitor, BK 305p.)
The `him' in the above refers to Satan and `we' refers to the Church, were the Grand Inquisitor is the chief local official. The Grand Inquisitor has arrested Jesus Christ and jailed him for performing a miracle on the first day of his second coming. The quote is from a conversation between the Inquisitor and Jesus in the dungeon. In the novel's narrative context it is Ivan Karamazov telling his little brother Alyosha an allegory, in an attempt to destroy his innocence.
Chuck Grimes