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Sunday, February 27, 2011

A Misconception Challenged, and Madison WI Too!

The old solon who blogs as Ciceroanus had an interesting blog recently.  This fellow claims to venerate both Cicero and John Dewey, which seems to me rather contradictory, as Cicero was a moral realist and John Dewey was a pragmatist.  Hence the titular misconception.  The solon said he had a sympathy for natural law, and (rightly) said that natural law can exist even if there is no God.  So far, so good.  He went off the rails when he suggested that natural law can exist without moral absolutes, which is a preposterous claim.   Natural law is tied to the idea that things that are wrong one place are necessarily wrong everwhere.  This is what Plato and Cicero were emphatic about.  Now, if something can only be moral or immoral in all places, I cannot see any way in which morality can be anything other than absolute.  This is the problem;  someone like John Dewey would say that what is useful is what is true, but Dewey was a moral subjectivist, not a natural law thinker.

Events in Madison, Wisconsin show that the radical Left is denying reality.  All the people of Wisconsin need to see what will happen to their state if public employee benefits are not reigned in is look south to Illinois, Estase's state, which is in worse financial shape than Iraq.  I remember a loony economics professor I had that claimed (I'm not making this up) that wages were "like the song Alice's Restaurant;  you can have anything you want."  The problem with public employees is that they BELIEVE their wages can be whatever they want.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Ramen Noodles--Worse Than Death

The Other McCain reports that Rep.  Gwen Moore of Wisconsin has said that the horrible alternative to Planned Parenthood is, drum roll and ominous music, eating Ramen noodles because of poverty. 

I intend to spend more time on epistemology in the coming weeks, not because Estase has to, but because the current political scene is becoming so dark and unreasonable that philosophy seems better for one's mental health.  I don't know what to make of a world where people can actually argue that dismembering fetuses is better than eating ramen noodles.  I don't know what to make of a world where a left winger with a gun becomes a reason for villifying right wingers.  Estase does not want to sink into the habit of thinking that politics is everything, or is a justification for being hateful.