Ms. Schluessel,

Have you:

1. Taken one of Dr. Norcross’s classes?

2. Spoken with anyone who has taken one of Dr. Norcross’s classes?

3. Spoken with Dr. Norcross about his views on animal ethics?

4. Read “The Animal Ethics Reader”?

5. Read the “Killing and Letting Die” anthology that he (co-)edited?

6. Made any effort to discover (by conversation or by reading) how, as a co-editor of an anthology on the topic, his views relate to those of the contributors to the anthology?

7. Heard the presentation or read the paper on “Torturing Puppies, etc.”?

8. Read his comments in response to somebody else’s paper on “Disability, Marxism, and Ecofeminism”?

9. Noticed from the CV that those are in fact assigned comments on somebody else’s paper for a conference, rather than a topic Norcross wrote on himself?

10. Taken Dr. Norcross’s class on the Simpsons and Philosophy, or talked with anyone who has taken it, or talked with Dr. Norcross about it, or read the book by the same title, or, for that matter, heard of the concept of “humor”?

11. Noticed that the PhotoShop of his head onto President Bush’s body is actually a joke about Kantian ethical theory, not about the war in Iraq?

12. In general, done absolutely anything to discover what Dr. Norcross’s views are, or what his arguments for those views are, or what his courses are like, or what he’s like as a person, other than skimming very quickly over his faculty website and speculating on the titles of papers you found in his CV?

I’m just curious, because if you have done any of these things you offer no evidence of it here. But if you haven’t done any of these things, then you simply have no idea what you are talking about when you speculate on what his courses are like, what he demands of students, what he’s like as a person, what he believes, or what sorts of arguments he gives to defendthose beliefs. But if you don’t know what you are talking about, then why are you talking about it?

Sheldon: “The discussion has proceeded as if they have no rights in the matter but we do. We will let them come here if and only if we have a use for them. And “we” doesn’t refer to a group of free individuals, but rather to a collective Borg-like entity with rights superior to any held by its constituents.”

Yes. Thank you. Precisely.

A while back I had a discussion with Jason Kuznicki over his statements on immigration policy (which were more liberal than his interlocutor’s, but not in favor of open borders, and which spent a lot of time on the completely irrelevant subject of “assimilation”). I suggested, among other things, he was being presumptuous and condescending when he tried to talk up his willingness to “let nearly all of [the Mexicans] enter who wished” as if he were doing Mexicans some kind of favor.

He seemed pretty baffled about the suggestion, and since I was more interested in discussing other points I didn’t press the point. But I think this is a fine explanation of why the rhetorical posture grated on me, even from someone who favors a policy outcome that’s substantially more liberal than the current regime. Jason asked what he was “supposed to do with them, if not let them through?” I think the right answer is that you’re supposed to stop pretending like the American ambiguous-collective gives you some kind of authority to stand as a gatekeeper on property that doesn’t belong to you.

“But rights,even natural rights, are not packed into one’s suitcase and transported from country to country, especially while breaking the law. Distasteful as it may be, and to the extent they’re honored, natural rights are protected, recognized, and practiced under the laws and mores of the State, they are not free floating, trans border entities, …”

Pardon? Of course they are. Part of the concept of a natural right is that it INHERES IN THE INDIVIDUAL wherever she may be, and under whatever conditions; they do NOT derive from the constitution of this or that state to which she may be subject at any particular time. It is precisely for this reason that they are described as “natural,” not conventional, civil, or political, rights. If you want to devise a theory of something else that you call “rights,” which governments other than the one that claims a particular subject’s allegiance are not bound to respect, then you can do so, but you certainly have no basis for confusing the concept of natural rights with whatever it is you’re on about.

“It lends itself to the dilution of adherence, gratitude, and loyalty to the land they have, [temporarily?] chosen, …”

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

I happen think that the revolutionary implications of the natural rights doctrine is one of its chief virtues, not one of its vices. Loyalty and gratitude must be earned; they don’t just spring up out of the soil. And neither any actually existing State nor any self-appointed representatives of a blood-and-soil ambiguous-collective DESERVE one bit of adherance or loyalty, let alone of gratitude, if they go around invading the natural rights of people who have done no violence to person or property.

“Through interviews with U.S. Congressmen, as well the former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents, tax attorneys and authors, Russo proves conclusively that there is no law requiring citizens to pay a direct tax on their labor.”

Jesus. Who cares?

If there were such a law, would that make it one iota more acceptable for the government to take those taxes at gunpoint?

As a side note, just out of curiosity: how does forcibly keeping these alleged anti-freedom people in (say) Mexico help the prospects for freedom and smaller government in Mexico? Or do you just not care what happens there?

Patri:

Now, there is plenty of room for debate about the resulting net impact. But if immigrants truly are anti-freedom, then the real question is how to evaluate this tough tradeoff. Not whether libertarians can have their immigration and a small government too.

There is no tough tradeoff here unless you think that justice only demands that you try to reduce the net quantity of coercion going around in your neighborhood, or in the world at large. I don’t think that; I think that justice primarily demands that you, personally, not coerce anybody else. There are lots of things that I might do to try to stop myself or my friends from being plundered or assaulted; but plundering or assaulting unrelated third parties, merely on the basis of the political views they are demographically likely to hold, doesn’t even rise to being a candidate for consideration, let alone an attractive one.

Patri:

Cornelius – you are assuming that the children of current Americans have the same orientation towards freedom as the incoming immigrants. And the entire argument is founded on the claim that the immigrants have a different attitude towards freedom than the residents.

I think you may be missing the point.

Let’s suppose that we accept the principles you lay out in this post. Since you supposed, arguendo, that one hypothesis was true (viz. whether immigrants are substantially more illiberal than native Americans), in order to argue for a general principle, then we are entitled to do the same with a different hypothesis (viz. whether American-born children are substantially more illiberal than immigrants) in order to test the same principle. So the question is: if it turned out to be the reverse, and American-born children were, on balance, more illiberal than immigrants, would you then be willing to accept government eugenics, mandatory sterilization, forced abortion, et cetera on American citizens, as a means to getting a society with a lower ratio of illiberal residents to liberal residents? If you aren’t, then what makes child-bearing, or Americans, or American child-bearing, so special that you’re unwilling to allow coercion there but willing to allow coercion against peaceful immigrants? If you are, well, then, I suppose we know what sort of a political theory is yours.

Brooklynite:

But I do think that a lot of men are tremendously insecure about their sexual attractiveness, and for such men porn offers fantasies of acceptance as well as domination.

I’m not sure that this really addresses the question. For many men “sexual attractiveness” and “acceptance” (being sexually “liked,” etc.) are themselves cashed out in terms of domination. If these “fantasies” portray “attractiveness” as a sort of force that overwhelms initial reluctance or produces sexual frenzy out of nowhere then they are portraying “acceptance” as more about domination over a woman than they are about the woman’s autonomous desire. (And I think an awful lot of pornography does portray “acceptance” like that.) Indeed the whole scripting in terms of men “offering” and women either “accepting” or “rejecting” is itself part of the problem.

Jill:

The practice itself isn’t inherently demeaning or disgusting, but I think that reality of how it’s performed in the sex industry is troubling. That said, there’s obviously a distinction between what people see in the pornos they watch and what they actually do and feel. But the lines can get blurry.

Right, and I think the reality of how it’s performed outside the sex industry (or, how men very often expect for it to be performed) is also pretty troubling. Those lines get especially blurry when what people (or specifically, men) do and feel, or what they “fantasize” about doing, is deeply influenced by what they see in the pornos they watch.

Sara:

I just don’t see how a healthy attitude toward male orgasm can be portrayed in porn with prevalent anti-semen feelings …

It probably can’t. A healthy attitude toward male orgasm probably can’t be portrayed in porn at all, in a society where sexuality is so often laced with male manipulation and domination of women, whatever the feelings towards semen in particular. In point of fact, I’d say we should worry more about the former than the latter, since if you knock out the attitude that semen is dirty but don’t knock out the attitude that sex between men and women should be about the man dirtying and degrading the woman, then these kind of humiliation rituals will just be expressed in different ways, not involving the smearing of semen.

… since it’s a necessary part of male sexuality, so the only thing we can really work on is the attitude toward it.

But semen isn’t a necessary part of male sexuality. Satisfying and pleasurable sex may or may not have anything to do with a man ejaculating, let alone going to some special effort to ejaculate visibly on someone’s face or body.

nerdlet:

I do agree, though, that there are plenty of guys who are ashamed of their naked bodies, or basic, I don’t know, sexuality, and that’s not something that’s discussed often. Mostly I blame porn, too bad there’s nothing to be done about it.

Well. The men in question could always stop watching porn, if it makes them feel bad about themselves.

Marksman2000:

So what’s your idea of kinky sex? Missionary with the lights off?

Please let’s not go there. Neither Glaivester nor anybody else is under some kind of mandate to enjoy oral sex, or for that matter any kind of sex at all.

If “Brilliant” is meant non-sarcastically, this post may be the world’s first known instance of the Broken Laptop Fallacy.

tiago,

Actually, I think Ctrl-Z should work fine for undoing the Textile-to-HTML conversion without needing to add a toggle button, and you could just click the button a second time for the redo. At least, the Instant Markdown script that I hacked together based on Instant Textile allows for a normal Ctrl-Z undo, and I don’t think I changed anything that would affect that.

Thanks for this post. On a related note:

I suggest to you that transformation of the male sexual model under which we now all labor and “love” begins where there is a congruence, not a separation, a congruence of feeling and erotic interest

I think that the primary thing that the “definition” demonstrates is the kind of gibberish that you get out when you assign writing tasks to a committee.

Pham, blaming the lack of non-white characters on the lack of non-white authors doesn’t really tip the scales at all. There’s no reason why white authors can’t be expected to write stories with sensitive and intelligent portrayals of non-white characters. If they can manage non-human races, they can surely manage to think up a non-white human if the existence of such people crosses their minds, and they put a good faith effort into it. If it doesn’t cross their minds, or they don’t put a good faith effort into it, then that’s something to worry about in itself.

Also, while the invisibility of non-white characters is one of the worrying things about Golden Age sci-fi, as far as race goes, it’s hardly the only thing. I can think of some pretty nasty cases of overtly racist stories from Golden Age heavies. To take a rather egregious example, Heinlein’s Sixth Column is pretty embarassing more or less from start to finish. (To be fair, Heinlein later on said he was really dissatisfied with Sixth Column, and that the idea had really come from John W. Campbell. But then, that only relocates the problem.)

Anyway, I’m not at all sure that this is what the Seattle school officials were referring to. Then again, I’m not at all sure that they were referring to anything concrete or identifiable at all.