Come on Max, everyone knows that what strapped government schools in low-income areas need is standardized tests. Piles and piles of standardized tests, day in and day out. Nothing inspires a love of learning like endless scantron paperwork.

In all seriousness, I think this is a great idea, both for high schools and for colleges. High school students get systematically exposed to a much richer set of options and experience a certain amount of the freedom and responsibility that comes with a college setting. Colleges, hopefully, get the joy of fewer students showing up at the age of 18, allegedly for full-time college work, while still needing a couple semesters’ worth of remedial training in basic English composition skills. (Of course, they would have to deal with 14-16 year olds showing up while still needing a couple of semesters’ worth of basic English composition skills, but that means less time wasted on the stupid stuff when they’re actually settling in to make college their full-time gig.)

“It could be used to restrict the state’s ability to keep abortion safe. … Malpractice law and regulatory law (requiring that abortions be performed by licensed MDs) could be construed as restricting abortion.”

Laws such as these are very bad ideas and if an amendment were to ban them from going on the books, so much the better for the amendment. Abortion is not a particularly dangerous procedure; prior to legalization it was safely performed by Women’s Liberation activists in the Jane network after they had been trained by a paramedic. And of course there is nothing to prevent women who want an abortion only from a licensed MD from getting it.

Doctor-only and hospital-only laws are a staple of anti-abortion efforts to limit access to abortion; that’s because they dramatically restrict the availability of abortion and drive up the cost. Women who will be able to obtain abortions regardless of the cost or distance that they have to travel to get one will be fine, but the effects are insidious and oppressive for poor women who don’t have the same options.

Lucinda Cisler of New York Radical Women took up the point in Abortion Law Repeal (Sort Of): A Warning to Women back in 1969 (particularly in the closing sections). And the sad thing is that nearly everything she predicted three years before Roe has since come to pass.

“Bush, he’s trying to get rid of every program of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s” … Well, that’s probably [i]true[/i]. The problem with Bushists is that they wants to throw out all the old idiot programs and replace them with [i]new[/i] idiot programs: TANF, vouchers, faith-based welfare, NCLB, social security accounts, national sales taxes, etc.

And so it is that they can gleefully hop on Leviathan’s back and march through the burning town, all the while hoisting blood-red banners proclaiming “IT’S YOUR MONEY” at the front of the column.

Micha: “Barganier is clearly implying that Max is an advocate of torture, not an advocate of relative ethics.” No, he isn’t. Barganier has many standing problems with Max’s policy positions, not the least of them that Max is pro-war, whereas Barganier writes for AntiWar.com. The “boiling alive” bit is part of a longer argument about why total war against the wogs is permissible. I see no reason to uncharitably read Barganier as calling Max a boiling-advocate here rather than, say, an advocate of a morally indefensible war.

Micha: “After all, relativism is much less controversial than torture …”

N.B.: since Max’s account of rights [i]entails[/i] the monstrous consequence that you aren’t doing anything wrong to a foreigner by torturing her for no good reason at all (up to and including boiling her alive just for the sadistic pleasure of it), the position ought to be just as controversial as torture. If it’s not, then that’s merely a matter of not thinking through the ideas that you claim to be discussing.

Bob:

“Rad Geek, I am not saying that it is morally permissible. I am denying the existance of this moral sphere.”

Fine, but that is a position different from Max’s; Max holds that rights-claims are significant objectively binding; he just holds that they only have that significance and that force within the context of certain sorts of political structures. That’s the claim that I am responding to; although what I have to say bears on plain moral nihilism, too.

“From where do you get your morality? God?”

Hardly; I’m an atheist, and even if I were a theist I’d still regard divine command ethics as incoherent. I can give you a long account of what I take to be the proper grounds of moral claims if you want but this isn’t the best forum in which to do it. So for the moment let me just point out (1) that there are many ethical theories on offer that ground objectively binding moral claims in the nature of the human person, as either a thinking or a feeling being (or both); and (2) that whatever involved arguments and theoretical frameworks you might get tangled up in the course of having ethical arguments, statements such as “You’re really doing something wrong to innocent foreigners if you boil them alive” is far more obvious than any of those arguments or theories. If it could be showed that some set of premises that I endorsed undermined or failed to support the anti-boiling conclusion, that would be as good a reason as any to reject at least one of the premises—not a reason to start deliberating about whether boiling innocents alive is a good idea or not.

[On premise 2 of my argument, that there really is something wrong with boiling innocent foreigners…] “I still am not convinced.”

But Bob, I’m not interested in whether you’re convinced or not; I’m interested in whether or not you have reason to be convinced. (See my discussion of the here-is-one-hand argument and charges of questions-begging for why that’s important.) My argument is (1) that the burden of convincing is clearly on the person maintaining that you’re really not doing anything wrong to an innocent foreigner by boiling them alive, and (2) that a good reason for convincing someone can’t be made. And certainly this is not that reason:

“Right and wrong are constructs of society; naturally, every man or group of men are free to do whatever they choose insofar as they have the physical power to do it.”

I don’t agree; and the fact that boiling innocent foreigners alive really is wrong whatever you feel about it and whether or not you have the might to force it on someone else without untoward consequences is as good a reason as any to reject such sweeping arm-chair theorizing about moral claims in a state of nature.

“You may argue against the efficacy of boiling people, or argue that it is counterproductive,”

Counterproductive to what ends?

“cruel,”

“Cruel” is a moral term; there’s no good way to distinguish cruelty from fair punishment for wrongdoing except by reference to the question of whether the person does or does not deserve the harsh treatment. And that is just the sort of moral question that you claim to be somehow meaningless.

“or ineffective”

Again, ineffective for what ends?

‘But that is not a reason why it is “wrong.”’

Nobody in her right mind says that boiling people alive (or impaling them on sharp sticks and leaving them to die over several days, say) is wrong because it “undermines society” or some nebulous set of rules. It’s wrong because you’re forcing the most excruciating pain, and ultimately a hideous death, on a completely innocent person. You don’t need some extra theoretical reason to condemn that: it’s horrible enough on its own.

“Proving that too many hippie swine survived the Kent State shootings…” Hey, Sabotta, you are aware that the people shot in the Kent State massacre were murdered by the State, aren’t you? Why not follow up with a crack about the death of Vicki Weaver?

Because, after all, nothing says “primo libertarian comedy material” like cold-blooded murder at the hands of government agents.

“Barganier’s excerpt and interpretation of Max’s comment implies that Max is arguing in favor of torture. He isn’t.” I know Max isn’t; but I have no idea where Barganier says that. In his “express your disgust” post I see where he points out that Borders’ argument leaves the boiling alive question open to deliberation over matters of strategy and whether we find it too gross. I see where he says that any account that leaves it open is, whether right or wrong, not a libertarian account but rather something else. But I don’t see anywhere where he says or implies that Borders condones throwing people into the cauldron. Max’s position is objectionable enough just as he has stated it, without needing any embellishment.

Micha, where and how did Barganier quote Max’s out of context? The boiling alive comment is a direct implication of Max’s own stated position; it’s just as pithy a condensation as you could fear for. Max dropped a mosntrous consequence into Barganier’s lap; Barganier pointed it out.

Micha,

I’d like to set aside the question of forseen and intended consequences for a moment. Not because it’s unimportant or uninteresting, but because I don’t think that it actually bears very much on the issue with Max Borders. There is another important distinction that needs to be made here, and once made I think the question of forseen and intended consequences can be mooted without any effect one way or another on the debate over the permissibility of boiling innocent foreigners alive. There is an important disanalogy between the Eric case and what Borders says about boiling foreigners: in the case of Eric, I think it would be seriously mistaken to conclude that what the Eric case shows is that sometimes you can shoot innocent babies without their rights being violated, or that there are cases where assaulting innocents is not blameworthy. Not so: the baby’s rights are being violated; it is being murdered. What the thought experiment shows is that the blame falls on Eric, not on the shooter. Why? Because it is Eric, not the shooter, who made it so that the baby would be shot. Killing innocent babies is not permissible on any theory of rights that could be plausibly characterized as “libertarian”; what the Eric case is meant to show is not that it’s permissible, but to open the question of who is to blame for the rights violation.

It’s an interesting and important question how far this analysis applies, and whether it applies to some of the different attempted justifications of torture that have appeared (I think it doesn’t apply to most of them; because most of them actually involve a situation in which the torture victim is not innocent, and so have to do more with procedural rights and proportionality than with non-aggression). But however broadly or narrowly it may apply, it doesn’t do Borders any good. His claim isn’t that, when boiling innocent foreigners alive serves American interests, the fault for the boiling might rest on someone other than the boiler (who would it rest on?). His claim is that there just isn’t any question of objective fault at all. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t do anything wrong to an innocent civilian under a foreign sovereign; you could at most do something that would be foolish strategically, or perhaps something that you would find gross. Whereas the question of whether you can shoot the baby to stop Eric hinges on who gets the red card in the human rights game (you or Eric or both of you), the question that Borders raises is whether boiling innocent civilians is even governed by the rules of the game at all. Borders’ stated position is that trying to blame anyone (much less demanding restitution from them) for boiling a completely innocent foreigner alive is like trying to pay with a cheque in a society that has no banks. Those of us who find his position monstrous (and/or anti-libertarian) are concerned with that, not with a disagreement over who properly to blame for the boiling.

Holy mother of God.

“You have to say, ‘Here are the rules,’ and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability,” said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon ….

… Yes, and let’s see who wrote the rulebook:

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times.

… Starting off, apparently, with apartheid South Africa and its passbooks for the colored (now with high tech biometrics added to make it even creepier).

“… One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.”

… And this proposal comes straight from Leon Trotsky and his plan to implement industrial conscription under the regimentation of the Red Army. When he published the idea in 1919, he even managed to horrify his fellow Bolsheviks–no small feat, that.

Thank God our boys are over there to stop the enemies of freedom and democracy in Iraq.