The Rover Conventions
Commenter “Sergey” has contributed a wonderful piece of folk wisdom about international law and its enforceability:
In old Russia there was a proverbial Yiddish saying on usefulness of formalities of law in dealing with those who do not respect law: “Scribe mit a Hund a Dogovor” (sign a treaty with a dog so it would not bite you).
Yes, indeed. Dip Rover’s paw in the ink and have him sign on the dotted line, and I’m sure everything will be just fine.
Would that be a legally binding contract?!
It would be if the eco-terrorists were in power.
Basic assumption of both criminal and contract law is that humans can knowingly control their behaviour, and common wisdom about animals is that they can not. If a person lacks this ability, he/she is declared legally incompetent, so unaccountable for misbehavior, and all his signatures void. It seems, that all rants on “root causes” boil to negation of this basic assumption, at least in respect to members of “protected groops”. So it looks like leftists tend to see these protected folks as animals in legal and moral sense, and only white males – as humans. Womens, blacks, arabs and latinos, according to them, should be considered morally and legally as a form of wildlife.
This tendency of left often labeled by right as “inverted racism” or “inverted sexism”. But really this is racism as such, pure and simple.
Hmm, Sergey, that reflects a point I’ve often pondered: That this quest for legislating and forcing equality has ballooned into an enshrinment of lessened status of those being protected, not an honest attempt at uplifting.
Also, it’s an explanation of the double standard in holding the US as responsible for acts that, when committed by others, is passed off, looked over, or otherwise excused. There’s an implicit racism in those stances.
There’s explicit racism in all of these posts.
1)Sergey’s ‘assumptions’ about non-white s are that they are not responsible for their behavior. Non-whites are not ‘legally incompetant’ in the view of any laws. Perhaps you’d like to be more specific – perhaps an example or two.
2)Root causes, as I can only guess at what you mean, have nothing to do with to do with this ridiculous ‘basic assumption’. They have to do with observing cause and effect and directing policy to address these issues.
3)As you clearly wrong in 1 and 2 you are wrong in 3 – the left does not view non-whites as animals. Acutally the left looks at the right and sees their views(the lack of moral relativist application)as degrading and de-humanizing.
Again – taking in the abstract makes it very difficult to understand what in the hell your talking about with real certainty – so give some examples.
You are arguing from a perspective that all peoples(or countries, or ethnic groups etc) are ‘in practise’, equal.
They are not. Some are born with advantages, others are not.
And from this basic fact – the left seeks to address these inequalities when analysing issues.
Simple stuff….
No, it is not my assumption that non-whites are not legally human. My assumption is just the opposite. But absolving some groop of responsibility for their acts at pretext of “root causes” implicitly puts them on a par with animals, and that is implicit racism.
Equality under law is incompatible with socio-economical equality. If you insist on handicap of “affirmative action” (in order to make equal outcomes achievable to everybody), you undermine equality under law and make “protected groops” permanently handicapped. This is misservise to them.
Again Sergey – I’m not sure what you mean when you say socio-economically disadvantaged peoples are ‘handicapped’ by policies that ‘absolve them from responsibility.’
Affirmative action doesn’t handicapp them in the least. It address real and discernable social inequalities that exist in the American education system(and in the entire system in general)by making a secondary education more accessible than it would otherwise be. How thats a handicap I’m well and truly stumped.
Affirmative action isn’t intended to promote equality as you define it. It’s intended to give an advantage to a historically disadvantaged group – a group, you’ll remember, disadvantaged by outright racist policies until relatively recently – an advantage in an area in which they have been serverely handicapped generations before.
That acknowledgement and the practical outcome of this policy is the complete oppossite of what you say.
And thats just common sense, Sergey.
I got my college paid for by a Presidential (affirmative action) scholarship.
I’m also as white as white can be.
There is no system that cannot be manipulated by someone clever enough. If Steve’s side ever comes to power, rest assured that it will have someone like me at its head, twisting it into a fascist state as quickly as they can.
I have nothing against “affirmative actions” that are applied by some objective criteria to everybody, without racial, etnical or gender preferences (for example, scolarships to those who can not afford to pay for education}. These practices obviously do not violate equality_under_law principle. But quotas based on groop membership for citizens with theoretically equal rights is quite another story. They can alleviate some problems in short-term perspective, but tend to aggravate them in long-term perspective, so can be practiced only temporary and with great caution.
It often boils down to something rather simple — expecting others to see things the same way that we do.
We can expect the dog to honor the contract, but obviously he won’t see it the way we do… and will not understand our outrage when he violates the contract.
In fact, I’d suggest that the core of this dispute lies in where we expect others to see things the way we do, and where we do not. If I understand Sergey correctly, for example, he is arguing that personal responsibility is a universal trait, and that we do people a disservice if we do not expect them to own up to the consequences of their actions. Mr. Britton, on the other hand, seems to be arguing that a desire to be given opportunities (and to respond honorably to them) is universal, and so advocates offering better opportunities to those who have historically been denied those opportunities. (Although he has not said so, the implication is that, once unequal opportunities are dealt with, the rest will follow.)
Frankly, I see the two issues as quite distinct from one another (except insofar as one rarely sees these two opinions coexisting in the same person).
respectfully,
Daniel, I see no contradiction between these assertions. Personal responsibility is not universal trait, it is moral norm pertinent to Judeo-Cristian tradition, but, according this tradition, it should be applied universally. And in primitive tribes just contrary norm exists, that of collective responsibility. This is accompanied by understanding of social justice as material equality, again contrary to Judeo-Cristian understanding of justice as “fair play”.
May be, you heard a joke: there are two sorts of Jews, those who believe that Judaism is social justice, and those who know better (variant: who know Hebrew). I happen to belong to the second.
Did you hear the one about the three-legged dog? He stomps into a saloon and growls to the bartender: “I’m lookin’ fer the man what shot my paw!”
City fellow takes a ride in the country and has a flat. Getting out of the car he notices a pig on the other side of the fence, a pig missing a hind leg. He tries to jack the car up but the shoulder’s too soft and the jack keeps sinking in the soft earth. He hears a noise and turns around in time to see the pig pushing a flat stone under the fence. Astonished, he places the stone underneath the jack and is able to jack the car up enough to change the tire.
About this time the farmer walks up asking if he can help. The city guy says excitedly, “That is one smart pig you have.” The farmer says, “Yeah, he’s smart alright – one night last month he busted through the front door squealing real loud to warn us about the fire that started in the kitchen and we were able to put out the fire before much damage was done.” The city fellow said, “That must have been when he lost that leg.” The farmer replies, “Nope, he kept the leg that night.” The farmer continues, “He’s also brave – we had a feud with that bunch up the hill that kept damming up the creek and that pig stepped in front of a bullet meant for me.” The city man says, “Well, THAT must have been when he lost that leg.” “Naw,” drawls the farmer, “The bullet went nowhere near his leg.”
The city fellow, bursting with curiosity, asks, “I have to know – just how DID he lose that leg?” The farmer pauses for a moment and finally says, “A pig that smart … and that brave – you don’t eat him all at once.”