Rebuttal

I get so few comments and find the topic so interesting I thought I'd take time to respond to a comment I received today. I'll put the text I'm responding to in italics so it will hopefully be easier to read.

It was God who defined marriage as between a man and a woman (check it out!)

Check it out where? The bible? Which version? Will the verses I read be intelligible in English or do I need to learn Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic? I think I covered this well in my last post. If one wishes to say god defined the term, then the state has no place in giving married people special status of any kind. Check out the first amendment and refer to the text of the declaration of independence where it is established that the government's authority comes from the governed...and that includes all gay members of society.


Our founding fathers had NO idea what this country would be like in the year 2010. They could not possibly have fathomed gay rights or marriage for that matter. Our founding fathers were Christians although some refuse to believe that.

The founders may not have known what the country would be like in 2010, but they built into the system protections for all minorities, right down to the individual, and they designed a government with checks and balances that they hoped would be able to protect those minorities from the government, and the ever changing will of the majority.

I find the word "Christian" in this context to be without meaning. There are as many sets of "Christian" belief as there are "Christians" in the world today; so to say that the founder's were "Christian" as if it implies shared religious views beyond deism is kinda silly.

There is nothing meaningful one can take from the idea that the founder's were "Christian" and then apply to the idea of the word "marriage" or it's legal issues. For instance, John Adams was a unitarian, who loved the peace and equality he felt was taught by the "Christian" religion...and today a number of unitarian sects of Christianity openly recognize gay marriage. In addition, John Adams was the president and he signed into law the Treaty of Tripoli which had been unanimously passed by the senate (not many things had ever passed unanimously at that time); this treaty contained this text: "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion -— as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen" So, it seems that John Adams and all the senators at the time didn't feel the government of the USA was based upon any religion or in any way in conflict with the Muslims or any other religion. Having the entire senate pass a treaty with such text says a lot about how "Christian" our government was at the time and even today.

Then there was Thomas Jefferson, who so disliked the superstition and magic in the bible that he actually took it upon himself to re-write the bible with all the magic and divine references to Jesus removed. His bible focused on what he felt were the valuable moral teachings. Do you suppose his religious views are in line with Ted Haggard? Jim Bakker? Billy Graham? Peter Popoff? How about the Pope? Any of them?

There is also reason to believe that George Washington and other founders were also only deist or unitarian in nature. Which again, might put their religious views in line with those "Christian" sects that openly accept gay marriage.

But I digress...all this is a red herring anyway.

I tend to believe that the people do have some say in the laws passed by Congress. These options are put on the ballot because the people have the RIGHT to provide their opinion.

The idea that we have inalienable rights, and that these rights are equal for all members of society are core principles I dealt with in my last post. Sure, you can have whatever opinion you want, but that doesn't mean we can vote on who to eat for lunch. The answer is: nobody. We all have the right to life and it can't be denied to us no matter how many people vote. So, sure the people of California have a process that they can use to pass laws or even constitutional amendments that bypasses their legislature, and they used it to get prop 8 on the ballot. That doesn't in any way mean that prop 8 is moral or legal...all it means is that some people followed a procedure and then they voted.



When the opinion of the majority is overturned by ONE judge (gay, black, brown, jewish, etc) I have a problem with the direction in which my country is going. Far cry from where it was just thirty years ago.

You should not respect the will of the majority on all things. I would have thought my cannibal example made that clear enough. You can't at the same time appeal to the founders for moral and legal guidance by suggesting that "they" gave us a different country and at the same time ignore the text of the declaration of independence which states clearly we the people have unalienable rights. That means we have certain things that simple can't be voted on morally...like who to eat for lunch.

It is the responsibility of the judge to stand up for the rights of the minority and insure that they are treated equally in the eyes of the law. I find it appalling that a judge would be chastised or criticized for fulfilling this aspect of his job.

What if the people under 60 years of age passed a referendum to seize all the property of all persons over 60 years of age and distribute it amongst themselves? Would you then be ashamed of the 62 year old judge for overturning the ballot measure and saying it was clearly not legal? Or would the judge have to be under 60 for his opinion to matter? It seems to me that it is clear the young people should not be allowed to vote away the property of all the old people even though we out number you by a lot. It seems equally clear to me, that any vote we had on the issue would be morally and legally void because of our constitution and founding principles.

It's important that the system treats everyone equal and that judges insure minorities are indeed equal in the eyes of the law.

---

"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
-- Pastor Martin Niemöller

Our government...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness"

So begins the declaration of independence. It states, rather succinctly in my opinion, a set of core principles upon which our country was founded. It doesn't cover all the principles one might say we had or have, but it's enough to get me started anyway.

I had a discussion today about the court ruling in California that overturned the voter initiative to outlaw gay marriage. The person I was talking to was of the opinion that it is wrong for a single judge to overturn the will of the people and that in particular, it was wrong for a gay judge to rule on this case. I felt she was wrong on both points.

On the matter of overturning the will of the people, I tried to point out that we aren't supposed to be ruled by the will of the majority in this country. We the people give to the government limited powers in order to secure our own rights (see above). The law should be blind when it comes to rights and securing them equally.
I tried to point out that it wouldn't be right if she was on an island with 100 cannibals and they all voted on what to eat for lunch. Clearly it's not right of them to eat her and they shouldn't even be allowed to vote on such a thing. The very idea is barbaric, immoral, and certainly it's contrary to the founding principles above. She has a right to life and that can't be voted on. She wanted to say that she would just be lunch and that's the way it is. I however disagree that such a vote is in any way moral or deserving of respect; and it certainly doesn't fall in line with what the founding fathers intended. I tried to point out that we are supposed to live in a republic and not a democracy. We aren't supposed to vote on just anything, just like we shouldn't vote on who to eat for lunch. The government is endowed with it's just, and limited, powers by the people to secure their rights. It is a well agreed upon right that we have the right to live, so it's clear that the government shouldn't be voting on who to kill. If a judge were to overturn the vote of the cannibals and tell them that they can't eat her, that judge would be right for overruling them even though the vote was 100 to 1!

At this point the issue seemed to be one of what "marriage" is. She wanted to say that it was a union of one man and one woman and that's the way it's always been and that's what the voters wanted so we should respect that.
I, on the other hand, recognize that either marriage get's it's meaning from a higher authority, which makes it a religious matter the state can't be involved with, or it is just a word that we the people define and alter to meet our needs. I suppose there might be other possibilities, but I'll focus on those, as they seem obvious to me.

If there is a god and he said what marriage is, then the state has no place in giving benefits or special status to followers of that particular religion. The law needs to treat us all equally. So, if the state did create a special status it called "marriage" and gave those married people special tax status, and special insurance rates, and special services it would have no choice but to allow that special status to be applied to all pairs of people who wanted to choose it or else it would be playing favorites with religion...and that's a big no no according to the first amendment and it's also obviously wrong according to the principles in the opening of the declaration of independence whereby all the people are securing their equal rights, not special rights for some. I happen to know there are religions and even Christian sects that respect and allow for gay marriage, so it's not even like there is some sort of universal understanding that god defined marriage one way or another.

The other possibility is that marriage is just a word we use to describe the union of two people. If it's just a word, then there is no reason we can't adapt that word to be inclusive and insure equal rights. Stop and think about what it means if gays can't have marriage status in the states eyes. It makes it complicated, if not impossible to establish inheritance rights, shared property rights, medical proxy status, and tax status, not to mention your ability to pay for insurance and other products.

Now, most of the time, it should be possible to jump through hoops and establish contracts between yourself and a gay partner that does give you inheritance rights, medical proxy rights, and perhaps some other things granted by a marriage contract. The ability to do these things, and the ease of doing them, will vary a lot by state. In contrast, all of this is taken care of at once with a marriage contract and as a bonus you'll also qualify for special tax status and the new found "right" to purchase products for spouses or participate in programs that require spouses.

It seems clear to me that by preventing some people from getting "married" in the eyes of the state, we are clearly playing favorites and limiting the rights of those who are not permitted.

At this point some people might choose to point out that "gay" people are free to marry a member of the opposite sex and get the same recognition from the state as the rest of us. So ha! They aren't limited! neener neener boo boo.
To that, I must ask what make a person a man and what makes a person a woman? Do I need a penis to be a man? What if I lost mine in an accident? What if I wasn't born with one?
Or, what if I'm not a simple XY, or XX baby? It's more common than you might think: http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency
Such a person would lack, what is fundamentally, the trait we generally use to determine gender and such a person would thus be prevented, by law, from establishing the same legal status that "normal" men and women can get.
No matter how small this pool of people is, it should be clear that a law that says you can marry a member of the "opposite" sex simply doesn't apply to these people as they don't have an opposite or they may have both sexes at the same time!

Oh sure...we could let these people just choose to be categorized as a M or an F....but now look what we've done...we've given a special privilege to these people! I can't choose to be an F! Certainly not without a lot of medical work.

No matter how ya slice it, you're going to end up denying rights to some people. Marriage, when limited to being between 1 man and one woman, creates a special class of people with special rights and that just simply doesn't jive with morality and it doesn't line up with the founding principles of this country.

Let the gay people marry. Let anyone marry anyone they like, be it XX, XY, XXY or any other chromosome combo. It doesn't hurt the straight or "normal" people at all. It doesn't hurt "traditional families" in any provable or objective way. All we know for sure it does is make certain people second class citizens to leave it the way it is.

A quick rant on health care reform...

I'm irritated with our government and media. I'm almost always irritated with them, but this week I'm more annoyed than usual.

Let's say we all agree that it would be nice if we could supply everyone the health care they need.
Let's further agree that our insurance companies and the laws that currently govern them are often "bad" and they leave some people lacking in care.

Now, the question is what do we do about this situation, if anything?

I think there are a number of things we could do to help the health care cost situation including the importing of drugs and tort reform. We can go more into that later.

I haven't read the bill and I have no intention of trying. Nobody has read the whole bill, with the possible exception of senate pages who may have been forced to read the thing on the floor of the senate while nobody was listening. I've read enough of whats in the bill to be annoyed with our government for having passed it though.

Right now I'd like to rant about how annoyed I am with the media saying the following or it's equivalent over and over: "this bill will make health care more affordable for everyone."

This is such complete bullshit. It's mind-boggling how people in government and the media can even think such things.

I'm particularly annoyed when they use the word "everyone." They are putting a tax on high priced health insurance...which by definition will make health care for those people more expensive. So, right off the bat we can't say everyone.

Next, there are some obvious flaws with the ideas in the bill.
The insurance companies like to avoid covering the sick...particularly those with pre-existing conditions. I'm not saying this is moral or that I like the insurance companies, but it's obvious that this is good for their business. Now, we're going to force insurance companies to cover all the people they wouldn't take previously. Why didn't they take them before? Because they were too damn expensive! So, the assertion is that this bill...which forces the insurance companies to cover all the costly sick people they have been trying to avoid or charge and arm and leg will somehow make premiums for the rest of us go down. This is back asswards. When you add a bunch of expensive people to the insurance rolls, all the healthy people have to subsidize their costs. Adding sick people will mean increased premiums.
Now, the hope is that insurance companies will lower their administrative costs and cut executive pay and such and this will help keep costs in check. There are a bunch of carrots in the bill to get them to try to do this and penalties if it doesn't seem like they are. Pardon me if I'm skeptical that the morons on capital hill could write a bill that would even come close to performing this task correctly and keep a highly profit motive based industry from wanting to earn more profit.

I think I'll also write some about the constitutionality of this absurd mandate to buy health insurance. It would be possible for congress to pass a law that does what this "mandate" does and have it be legal, but the way they wrote it, it is almost certainly unconstitutional.

Go government! Go Media!

Be Nice II

Next, let's address the supposed inconsistency criticism. This second type of criticism focuses on the difficulty of determining who exactly initiated force in many real-life conflicts.

First of all, the difficulty in determining who is the transgressor should not dissuade us from engaging in that process. So, right off I think this is a bad way of thinking. Don't do something right because it's hard? Can you offer me a moral rule that is easier to understand than the non-aggression principle?

Secondly, this type of argument often gets bogged down dealing with property rights issues and who owns what.

For instance people might criticize the people of Illinois and say we stole our land from the native Americans. To this entire line of thinking, I reply that the issue is not with aggression or use of force, but rather that we have entirely different definitions of what property is.

A proper definition of property also clears up a lot of issues like the "tax the rich to feed the poor" type issues we run into from consequentialists.

I'll leave a full exploration of property rights for later, but for now I'll say that most people have a horrid idea of what property rights are or should be and that if you adjust your views on property to be more in line with my own, you then avoid all sorts of silly criticisms of the non-aggression principle.

Next, comes the ambiguity criticism. This idea attacks libertarianism and the way an individual interprets the non-aggression principle. In simple terms, it points out how some see taxation as a form of government aggression and thus the only consistent way to follow the non-aggression principle is to be an anarchist, while others will say that the non-aggression principle is fine in a minimal government situation.

Some people say taxation isn't a form of aggression due to social contract reasons. To me, that's nonsense. I'm currently subject to social contracts made by others, sometimes hundreds of years ago. I have no realistic means of getting out of these so called social contracts. I could move to another country, but in that case I'm essentially choosing between social contracts. It's almost impossible for any individual to even hope to read the entire legal code that one is agreeing to for any country in the world and it's actually hard to emigrate to many countries. I could also get a boat and float around the oceans, or maybe hide in Antarctica, but I don't see those as realistic options. I don't consider it much of a contract when the best I can do is choose between nearly impossible to understand options that other groups will force upon me. I tolerate our government, and I even think our constitution has some great ideas, but I don't think it's a moral government.

For myself, I simply advocate for a stateless society and avoid the criticism. This would be the most moral thing to do. It would, if done where the individuals attempting it understood the idea, be ideal.
Some people see the idea of a stateless society as being extremist, and I can understand why, but that doesn't mean it isn't the most moral possible situation of all. Stop and think about it. What I'm talking about in the non-aggression principle world is that we all live in peace and nobody is aggressive to anyone else. Doesn't that sound nice?

There are possible criticisms to the stateless society, but we will deal with those another day. For now, I just think it's enough to think about how nice the world would be if people were all striving to follow the non-aggression principle. Imagine there's no countries, it's easy if you try.

Be Nice part I

So...let's return now to the non-aggression principle and why we should all try to follow it.

I can't prove that the non-aggression principle is true for all cases, but we can make an effort and I think we can come close. More importantly, I think that not agreeing with the non-aggression principle is an untenable position. So, I approach this more from the point of view that the NAP is the best moral rule available and positions that disagree with this assertion are likely irrational. I'm waiting for a good criticism or alternate position to come along. Let's explore some of the common criticisms of the NAP.

First, I'd like to point out that I think there is a spectrum of possible belief in the NAP. One could hold that it is always true that the NAP is moral and leads to moral behavior. One could hold that while the NAP is generally true, there is some enumerated list of exceptions that can be determined by other meaningful moral ideas. One could also hold that there is no inherent truth at all that the NAP is a good or moral idea. There may be other ways to view the NAP as well.

For those that would like to say there is no truth to the idea that aggression against innocents is by it's very nature wrong, I'd like to say that society can safely preclude you from further discussion on the concept of morality. This is a fringe view, and would sometimes be considered insane. It would be difficult to have a society at all if there was no restraint when it came to the harming of innocents. Assuming you did have such a society, I believe it is almost self-evident that such a society would have less happy people, less people getting what they want, more people getting harmed, and would by it's very nature be less moral. Morality is about what one "ought" to do, and what one "ought" to do relates to what one wants, and while we can't exactly weigh the desires of one against the desires of another, I do feel it is safe to say that a society where less people are getting less of what they want is less moral. There is more to say on this, but for now I'll just say that I find this position to be untenable.

Consequentialist crtiticism - This criticism is basically saying the NAP can't be right because it says do not kill 1 person even if that murder saves a million people.

I think the defenses to this criticism are perfectly adequate.
A) I would agree that the consequences of advocating the rule are superior to advocating that other individuals attempt to calculate each of their own actions to determine whether aggression or non-aggression would lead to better consequences.
B) There is no objective means by which we can tell, or anything even approaching consensus, as to what the "right" thing to do in such a consequential scenario is. Some people might claim that it's obvious we should trade 1 life for a million, but I deny that it is so simple. Who is the 1? That's relevant. More importantly, how can the consequentialist be sure of the actual outcome? In a real world situation, like say tax the rich to feed the poor; what are the unintended consequences of such a policy? Who can even fully understand what the complete consequences are?

And where do we draw the line? Is it right to kill 1 person to save 2? To save 3? There is no consensus, that's for certain.

The consequentialist will often agree that aggression in general is wrong, but assert that sometimes the ends justify the means. To that I can't help but wonder how anyone can determine what ends justify what means?

Stay tuned for more...

Goodness is not a zero-sum concept

It is not necessarily the case that in order for one person to get what they want, that another individual or group of people must lose out on what they want.

In economics and game theory, this is called non-zero-sum.

In some instances one might find people with desires in direct conflict. For instance you and I might want the exact same apple. We can't both possess the exact same apple.
More often though, we'll just both want an apple and unless we are toddlers the particular apple won't matter much. Should there be a way for both of us to have an apple, that is better for the whole group (me and you) than us fighting over the initial apple.

I'm almost done building up my basic premises now...I think the next post I'll jump to why we should all agree with the non-aggression principle.

A few propostitions or assertions to get us going...

Let's assume, with good reason I feel, that there is no moral giver. I leave it to others to prove that this is not the case. Until that proof arrives, we'll move on with this basic assumption.

Along the same lines, I propose that for all people capable of comprehending the questions, if we ask them about the relative goodness of a sufficiently large enough set of possible moral hypothetical situations we will end up with a different set of answers for every single person.

Such a set of questions might start with:
Is it right (or moral or good) to kill 1 person to save 2?
Is it right to kill 1 person to save 3?
...
Is it right to kill 1 person to save 100,000,000?
...
If you only could save either your child or your spouse, who would you save?
...and so on.

So long as we ask enough questions of all people surveyed, we'll never get the exact same set of answers...or at least I contend it is so unlikely to be possible for a sufficiently large set of questions as to not be worth considering as being meaningful.

Another way of putting this, might just be to say that "goodness" is subjective. Everybody wants something different and it is almost by definition that what a person wants is the same things as that which is "good" in their opinion.

Let's call that basic assertion 1 (ignoring the zero assertion that there is no god): "The goodness of any particular desire is subjective"

Next, let's define an "ideal world" to be the world in which an individual had everything they wanted. This is the maximum "goodness" any individual could ever hope to have in their world. Your perfect wold is different from mine, and almost certainly all other person's perfect worlds as well. We'll call this assertion 2: ideal world = maximum subjective goodness

Third, let's assume that for a sufficiently large set of individuals, it is not possible to have all persons achieve 100% of what they want. It might not even be possible with as few as 2 people, depending on the first 2 people in the set. This is the Rolling Stones assertion...you can't always get what you want. Assertion 3: conflict is inevitable. I feel safe in this assertion so long as I can point to any other individual in existence that doesn't want exactly what I do.

Now that we have established that:
1) goodness is subjective
2) ideal world = maximum subjective goodness
3) conflict is inevitable

I propose that given these things, the "best" world we can hope to achieve is the one where the most people get the most of what they want. Or, rather the "best" possible world is the one where we maximize the goodness for us all. We can't all have everything we want, but how can we all get the most possible?

I'll blather on about that idea in a future post.

Morality, Ethics, and Good

I won't be writing a complete philosophical treatise on these issues, but once again I think these are important terms to define before we move on.

I reference Wikipedia for definitions a lot not because it is authoritative, but because it at least gives definitions I find useful and it gives citations to much more complete essays, books, and other references on the issue in question.

So, in case you don't understand what I mean when using terms like morality, ethics, or good; start by clicking the links.

These definitions aren't always complete, but they give us a starting point.

In the begining the blog was without form and void

I don't expect to have a large following, but I'll treat this as a conversation with someone I don't know.

The first thing to do is establish a common universe of discourse.

In order to understand all the other things I may choose to talk about it's important that the reader understand my starting definitions and positions.

Much of what I believe comes from the non-aggression principle. This principle can be summed up with this definition: the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate.

I'll address some of the possible criticisms of the non-aggression principle as a moral tool in later posts and I'll explain more about why I find the non-aggression principle to be so useful and fundamental when it comes to thinking about morality and politics and other issues.

Next, I'd like to introduce the reader to the idea of natural rights. I'll need to explain this a little more than some other ideas or definitions, as I don't hold that a creator endowed us all with certain rights, rather I think we can derive certain natural rights from reason alone, more like Kant tries to do (not that I'm saying Kant is authoritative or correct, just more along the lines of where I come from). Natural rights will almost certainly need a post or two on it's own in order to discuss.

Once we establish what I think these two concepts mean, then it will be easier to discuss nearly all things moral and political.

Other issues and ideas we'll need to define and discuss further include: peak oil and fiat money. It's only after we have some understanding of what these things are that we will be able to discuss why I think these two things are so very important to where we (the world) are now and where we will be in the not to distant future.

This set of concepts should keep me busy for a while. Stay tuned.