Comments Elsewhere

Bill Woolsey writes: “So, regardless of whether boiling foreigners alive is or is not in the interest of America, it is neither moral or immoral.

“He went on to argue that he (like most people)
would find boilling people alive distasteful and
that he doesn’t believe that it is in the U.S.
interest.

“In no way was he advocating boiling people alive.”

But Bill, nobody that I’ve read on the matter has suggested that Borders does advocate boiling people alive. Bargainer certainly didn’t; what he did say is that there is no open question about the morality of boiling innocent foreigners alive under a libertarian theory of justice. Whether he advocates boiling innocent aliens alive or not, Borders leaves the question open for deliberation about its strategic value and our own tastes; and that is monstrous enough from the standpoint of common decency–let alone libertarian political theory–on its own demerits.

As for his own attempt to weasel around this problem by offering our “sentimental” reasons for finding the whole affair ghastly, they are incoherent, as I argue elsewhere. I won’t re-argue it at length here; the bottom line is that the only way we can make sense out of “sentimental shoulds” is by reference to how our emotions do or do not express judgments about what we ought and ought not to do. But that means that the reasonableness of the sentiments has to stand up to reflective judgment or else be dismissed as irrational (and so not giving any “should”). And that seems to tie our sentimental shoulds back into our normative shoulds: the sentiment of horror is only a reasonable sentiment if it expresses a judgment of a real state of affairs (viz. that it is really is horrible to boil someone alive).

There are some further epicycles that you could try to put onto the theory to explain away the judgment as something other than a moral judgment. Some of them I considered and rejected in brief; others can be dealt with elsewhere and at more length; but Borders set out none of them in the course of his argument. He just invoked the sentiments as a sort of magic charm to summon up reasons for action. But it doesn’t, in fact, advance the argument one inch.

As for comparing Borders to Prince Dracula–whether it’s juvenile or not is not something that I’m a fit judge of (since I’m rather partial). But I will say that Max Borders has explicitly stated, and argued at length, that there is no moral difference in principle between himself and Vlad Dracula. He has tried to argue at length and in several different places for a theory that would hold that absolutely any atrocity whatsoever could be committed against aliens without violating any principle of justice–from assault and pillage to impaling and boiling alive. It is his own stated position that the only difference between what he’s willing to do and what Vlad was willing to do is a matter of contingent circumstance, and a matter of personal taste. If that is not a monstrous position to hold, then what is?