jks writes:
> I don't think we are ever going to get agreement on fundamentals.
You may be right. I still mull this one over.
> That doesn't mean we can base society on one particular conception
of what's good, one moral view, on a bet that it will be agreed to in the
end.
But don't we do that in the United States? Isn't our conception of the good part of the Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Sounds like a list of goods to me.
> You want pragmatic procedures to end injustice, we can talk about those,
that's a different subject. We can talk about that too. It's not exactly
philosophy, more political strategy.
I think it is also philosophy as William James conceived it -- practical philosophy.
> But I thought we were discussing the idea that you are entitled to impose
your conception of the good on me.
No, I am saying just the opposite, specifically that heterosexuals do not have the right to impose their notion of good on queers. The question is how do we prevent the injustice of queer persecution? The option you presented -- proceduralism -- doesn't work (in my opinion) since it is easily manipulated by mob rule (see Missouri as an example). The end result of your process is DOMA uber alles.
What I am trying to understand is how, if an individual is conceived of as having inherent rights, a system based on this premise can be conceived of as legitimate if it permits the easy abrogation of these rights. It seems that the whole system is then nonsensical.
> I probably should have said that I am not a Rawlsian, and I have actually
atacked Rawls' derivation of his principles of justice from an Original Position
on precisely these grounds several times in print.
Okay. I guess I thought you were Rawlsian since you mentioned him.
> So, you want judges to ignore the law, if it doesn'y happen to be in accord with
what you think morality is, and act from what you think is the moral thing to do.
No, what I am asking is if human beings have a right -- say to privacy -- that is inherent, is a law that contravenes that right legitimate?
Another approach might be to argue that rights are not inherent, that they are tools invented by people and assigned to people in order to achieve certain ends.
> The idea that judges may rule on the basis of natural law (morality apart from
positive law) was rejected very early in our legal history. What judges do when
they rule a law to be unconstitutional is to hold it to be inconsistent with the
Constitution, regardless of the ethics of the Constitution.
I am not talking about natural law (whatever that is), I am talking about the social contract, a.k.a the U.S. Constitution. Isn't the Constitution based on the concept that human beings have an inherent set of rights?
> So you do want judges to be moral policement, striking down immoral laws whether
or not there is any authoritaive basis for them.
Well, if human beings are endowed with certain rights, and a society has been constructed on this premise, it seems silly to allow laws to be passed that interdict these rights. What sense does it make to have a Constitution that both sets out inherent rights and establishes the framework for the easy abrogation of those rights?
> Quite right, it has to be done by real people. The real people who do it in our
society are called the legislature.
And when the legistlature acts like a mob and persecutes minorities? Better luck next time fellas? Sorry about the Fugitive Slave Act and DOMA. You have rights, but the mob has decided not to allow you to exercise them.
> I like that line about Rawls' imaginary friends, I may use it, with attribution.
Kewl. I always wanted to be a footnote.
Chris writes:
> That's not an argument. That's saying that Miles is wrong because he doesn't
agree with you, and that you are right just because you're right.
No, I am saying that anything can be right theoretically. I understand that people have different moral beliefs. I find Miles' method of dealing with it -- majoritarian mob rule -- inadequate. Theoretically it is wonderful -- all the players are rational people acting according to best principles. But that is not how the real world operates. So my question to Miles is what is his moral justification for the persecution of queers and others that is a prominent consequence of his preferred method.
All he ever answers is that you cannot say one belief system is better than any other. According to him whichever system gets the most votes trumps all the others.
> OK, so what do you do when you come across someone who doesn't agree with
you on what injustice is? Shoot them? Send them to a reeducation camp?
No, that seems a little extreme. But then the passage of DOMA's is extreme too (heterosexists will, of course, disagree). What is to be done is exactly what I am trying to figure out. It seems clear that majoritarian rule permits the exploitation of minorities. Rawls' theory seems to be that minorities will join together and promote each other's interest as a counterbalance to the mob. However, it doesn't seem that this happens in reality, only in theory. Are there any other approaches out there that address this issue and have proven effective?
Also, I am curious about the concept of an individual endowed with rights. jks warns me to stay away from the metaphysical; but isn't this a metaphysical one?
John writes:
> The liberal proceduralist also faces that problem with someone who does
not agree on the "minima" of the LP's canon; but the proceduralist would
rightly insist on reversing the procedural sequence you suggest.
Okay, Stupidity Alert. What is (are?) the "'minima' of the LP's canon?" And what has to be reversed?
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Selfish Hedonistic Resister (thank you Alan Keyes).