Sunday, March 20, 2005
de rigueur
At this particular hour, it's all the rage for conservatives to do the Soul Searching Dance, as a deterrent against leftist claims of hypocrisy.
Basic point is, I like the Constitution because I like civilization. Not vice versa. I talked about this a couple months ago in LJ, in the context of "foolish consistency":
http://www.livejournal.com/users/polistra/18280.html
On a deeper level, I'm an absolute Darwinist. The job of each individual is to live long and reproduce; the job of each family is to preserve its identity and expand; the job of each tribe or nation is to spread its DNA as far as it can. For old-fashioned tribes like the Osage or the Japanese, DNA is literal. For newer nations like USA and USSR, made up of a wild mix of tribes, DNA is more abstract. Our job is to spread our essential ideas as far as we can.
One of those essential ideas is that people are different. This requires society and government to encourage productive use of those differences and to discourage destruction of innocent humans. We are now engaged in spreading that idea to other lands, and we are spreading by force because they used force to destroy some of our land and people. We are quite properly ignoring some bits of the Constitution in order to preserve our land and spread our ideas to places that need them.
In Terri's case, we have to spread that idea to Florida, which is already within our control. Florida's state "judiciary" has demonstrated that it does not value the productive potential of each individual, so we may have to stretch the Constitution just a bit to bring Florida in line with civilization.
The idea that we must preserve the letter of the law above all, propounded by both Commies and paleo-conservatives, is the most foolish of all consistencies. Leftists push the idea cynically because they are enemies of civilization: they want to weaken our defenses and confuse our people into submission. Paleocons think this way -- I guess -- just because they're foolish. Can't think of any nicer explanation. ¶ 9:20 AM
At this particular hour, it's all the rage for conservatives to do the Soul Searching Dance, as a deterrent against leftist claims of hypocrisy.
Basic point is, I like the Constitution because I like civilization. Not vice versa. I talked about this a couple months ago in LJ, in the context of "foolish consistency":
http://www.livejournal.com/users/polistra/18280.html
On a deeper level, I'm an absolute Darwinist. The job of each individual is to live long and reproduce; the job of each family is to preserve its identity and expand; the job of each tribe or nation is to spread its DNA as far as it can. For old-fashioned tribes like the Osage or the Japanese, DNA is literal. For newer nations like USA and USSR, made up of a wild mix of tribes, DNA is more abstract. Our job is to spread our essential ideas as far as we can.
One of those essential ideas is that people are different. This requires society and government to encourage productive use of those differences and to discourage destruction of innocent humans. We are now engaged in spreading that idea to other lands, and we are spreading by force because they used force to destroy some of our land and people. We are quite properly ignoring some bits of the Constitution in order to preserve our land and spread our ideas to places that need them.
In Terri's case, we have to spread that idea to Florida, which is already within our control. Florida's state "judiciary" has demonstrated that it does not value the productive potential of each individual, so we may have to stretch the Constitution just a bit to bring Florida in line with civilization.
The idea that we must preserve the letter of the law above all, propounded by both Commies and paleo-conservatives, is the most foolish of all consistencies. Leftists push the idea cynically because they are enemies of civilization: they want to weaken our defenses and confuse our people into submission. Paleocons think this way -- I guess -- just because they're foolish. Can't think of any nicer explanation. ¶ 9:20 AM
