> boddi satva, responding to Kel's JB passage:
> > This is just a stupid inflation of a bogus point. The United States is
> > not at war to inflict any "universal" on Iraq. That's the Bush
> > rhetoric. We're there to protect our interests and that is all we mean
> > to do.
>
> You're missing JB's point. She agrees with you. Her point--as I
> understand it--is that the Iraq travesty is perpetrated in the name of
> the universal: Democracy, Freedom, Triumph over Evil.
Right, that's what she and Bush both say, but it's not true. This war was perpetrated in the name of the American voters, by their elected representatives pursuant to our policies of "regime change" in Iraq (Clinton era) and enforcing our interpretation of the UN resolutions, etc. (found in the vote to give Bush power to use force) *and* pursuant to Bush's Constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief and conductor of our nation's foreign policy.
While it is true that "by positioning the U. S. war plan as battle in the ongoing war between Freedom and Tyranny, Bush is attempting to justify and extend the war." But that is mostly a rhetorical argument. That is an argument he's using with the voters to try keep pressure on the legislature to stop them from undercuttign his policiy. It's no more valid to use that as a basis for political critique than to use Pat Robertson's idea that this is a war between Jehovah and Jubal. Supporters of the Administration can use any rhetoric they want. Ultimately, Bush is doing this war because, as Commander-in-Chief he has the power to do any war he wants so long as the Congress allows him to do it.
That is, to use your words, "an almost banal but crucial point." The law is what gives him the power. It may well be that "appeals to universals are an effective rhetorical strategy to accomplish political goals" but one has to distinguish between rhetoric and law. Butler elides the two so she can use Bush's weak, stupid rhetoric to try and critique a system of law that is much smarter than she is.
You write that:
" I agree
> that JB could make her point more clearly, but I think she's
> highlighting an important practical problem with references to
> universals: they work via exclusion, not inclusion. Any political or
> social relations that do not correspond to the Universal Standard of
> Freedom and Democracy must be stigmatized, censured, and/or
> obliterated to distinguish the universal ideal from the aberration."
First of all, let's wake up from the Butler dream world and remember that we are talking about Saddam Hussein's Iraq. If any system more completely deserved to be stigmatized, censured and obliterated, then I don't know about it. If our's is a dirty system, Saddam was the filthy end of the pungee stick. Are Arabs who want to get rid of dictators like Saddam Hussein betraying " highly ethnocentric biases" against themselves? Are dictators some sort of sacred expression of Arab ethnicity? Dictators use identity politics for their propoganda, somehow I think it's a little insane for us to implicitly support the idea that dictatorships are a social necessity for certain cultures.
If you want to talk about a "universal" then look at warlordism. *THAT* is a cross-cultural, universal societal structure that should be recognized as such. The idea that universals work through exclusion is really just stupid and since it would negate most of Marxist theory, I don't know why we are wasting time on it in support of some daft cultural relativism.
> > It's reasonable to assume that they, and all nations,
> > will build up a set of laws that accomplishes what our system does and
> > it is also nearly certain that those laws will refer to ours. There is
> > no particular need to re-invent Common Law because it's "Western". It
> > reflects the work of generations of reasonable people trying to find
> > reasonable bases for resolving disputes and it works. It's an open,
> > changeable, adaptable system. It's not a "hegemony". It's a bunch of
> > books.
>
> This highlights JB's point: why on earth are existing political
> arrangements in our society the goal that will be reached by any
> thoughtful people at any time?
Well, how about because all the wealthy and free nations more-or-less share them and we are the wealthiest and arguably the freest (by some standards). What society should we emulate? Afghanistan? The People's Republic of China? You want the Cuban legal system in all its one-party glory? Tell me the political party that you would like to take over. If the people on this list were given absolute power to pick a leftist group to run America, they wouldn't be able to pick one.
Why couldn't other people come up with
> better legal systems than we currently have? There's nothing
> inevitable and necessary about our existing social relations and
> related legal systems. --Think about how much legal systems have
> changed in the past 500 years: it just seems silly to me to assume
> that this social change is going to halt at this point in history
> because we take it for granted that any "thoughtful" people will
> accept it
The idea that "social change is going to halt" - where do you even get that? What the heck does it have to do with anything I said? Most people I know look at our system as intrinsically subject to evolution (it may not be fast enough, but it exists). Thoughtful people build on what works and there is a tremendous amount in liberal-democracy that works very well. Property relations need to be improved, but that requires more, not less, legal thinking.
> Based on the historical and cultural record, I have a great deal of
> faith in human creativity and the potential for social change.
So do I, and that works retrospectively as well as prospectively. Th eidea that we should throw the democratic baby out with the capitalist bathwater denies the ingenuity and seriousness of the effort that went into making it.
People
> in the future, or in societies under different environmental
> conditions, will produce social and legal systems that look little or
> nothing like the systems we're used to.
No, I don't agree at all. There are many, many concepts that have endured and will endure because they are good and they work. Instead of makng blanket statements why don't you back up your assertion by telling us, for example, what parts of the Common Law you'd like to throw out and what you'd replace it with.
By assuming our existing
> legal system is the Universal Standard that all thoughtful and moral
> people will converge on
I didn't "assume" that. I thought about it from a Marxist, revolutionary perspective and decided after long study that there are important and revolutionary concepts to be found in Anglo-American law.
> we shut down opportunities for innovation and change.
No, we shut down opportunities for weak-minded rejectionism based on bogus notions of cultural relativism.
>(A pragmatic argument against appeals to universals.)
Not pragmatic and not really argument against appeals to universals. It's basically just dogmatic cultural relativism.
Some systems work better than others and by and large people don't care where they come from if they work. Socialism, for example, is a universal which I believe in very strongly exactly because it addresses problems without getting bogged down in cultural trappings.
What about you?
boddi