Thanks for the replies, Platt. -----Platt, Wed 2007-07-11 10:05---- Another way to look at your examples: using government to enforce a social contract between a man and a woman, ensure the freedom of elected local school officials to decide on their school's curriculum, and protect the lives of the unborn. As I noted previously, I consider these legitimate uses of government power -- protecting lives, ensuring individual freedoms, and enforcing contracts. I guess whether this view is libertarian or religious social conservative is up to you to decide. -----
I agree in the abstract that protecting lives, ensuring individual freedoms, and enforcing contracts are all legitimate government functions. I see and empathize deeply with the argument for protecting the unborn. I think abortion is one of the profound & divisive unresolved metaphysical & ethical questions of our time. I don't happen to believe in the metaphysics of "ensoulment" or even personhood at conception, though, so I think there is a window in which abortion (as well as embryonic stem cell research) is acceptable, where social considerations outweigh biological patterns. After all, a fertilized embryo can split into twins after 2 weeks of cell divisions, so how can we call an embryo a person? At some point in fetal development, obviously, abortion becomes unacceptable. Where is the line? Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan lay out some interesting perspectives on that question in their essay "Is it possible to be both 'Pro-Life' & 'Pro-Choice'?" <http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml>. I can also see the federalist argument behind allowing school officials to decide on the curriculum for their own schools. However, I think the relevant issue in the particular case of "Creation Science" or "Intelligent Design" is not local control but the separation of church & state. Teaching religious doctrine as science is the problem here & that's the ground on which higher-level government intervention is justified. I have far less understanding for the "gay marriage" ban and other religious social conservative anti-gay legislation, however. Perhaps you can tell me how allowing same-sex civil unions undermines contract law for heterosexuals. Prima facia, I don't see the problem. I'm not even sure that marriages are best thought of primarily as contracts ... -----Platt, Wed 2007-07-11 10:05---- Yes, but current intellect is devoid of values and thus incapable of proper control. "But having said this, the Metaphysics of Quality goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that bas been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals." (Lila, 22) This is an important conclusion of the MOQ that I don't think too many here are ready to accept. Nor in the ten years this site has been open do I recall it being thoroughly discussed. I get the distinct impression that most contributors here believe that if only we could rid the world of the supposed "who-whom" game of oppressors and oppressed we could attain Utopia, appealing to the authority of historical figures like Marx, Jesus, and the Buddha for moral guidance rather than the more realistic rational morality proposed by Pirsig. ----- I don't follow you here, unfortunately. You agree that communism & socialism are intellectual patterns trying to control society, but ... are defective because (like science?) they don't include values? Those two political forms value human equality almost above all else, right? I'm not a proponent of either communism or socialism, but I just don't follow your line of reasoning here. -----Platt, Wed 2007-07-11 10:05---- You paid the sales tax with your previously owned money (property) which becomes the communal property of the state. ----- OK, I can see that. I think this level of "communism" is unavoidable since we need somehow to carry out the functions of government & the money has to come from somewhere to pay for that. I don't see a slippery-slope from taxation to state ownership of either the means of production or all property, though. -----Platt, Wed 2007-07-11 10:05---- Since you asked: http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer ----- Thanks for the link! At first glance, this looks very promising. I'll have to research it more deeply. You may see this as government meddling, but I support environmental tax-shifting <http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/PB2ch12_ss2.htm> as one market-friendly way to remove the externalities that lead to the economics of environmental degradation. The combination of the progressive FairTax with the full-cost accounting of environmental tax shifting would likely reduce government bureaucracy, decrease the need for heavy-handed environmental regulation, and spur sustainable economic development. -----Platt, Wed 2007-07-11 10:05---- Generally agree. It's difficult to be "transparent" about some operations against terrorism without revealing techniques that if exposed would kill the operation. A difficult balancing act to be sure. ----- To be sure! moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
