In other words, “right but I want to quibble”.

“Right” about what? It’s true that Micha was using the term “naturalistic fallacy” in a sense other than the sense in which Moore used it. (Specifically, he used it to refer to arguments that infer something about the moral status of something from its naturalness.) But I don’t have any basic problem with that kind of loose usage as long as it doesn’t interfere with accurately understanding what Moore meant by the term when he used it. The “quibble,” such as it is, is aimed to clarify how Moore himself used the term. Which is not an issue that Micha raised, or one that’s particularly important to assessing his argument; it’s an issue that you raised in the course of a reply to him.

It’s certainly true that the issue of what Moore coined the term “naturalistic fallacy” to mean is tangential to this conversation. But misrepresentations of his view, especially those that are very common and very misleading, are worth correcting anyway, in the interest of accuracy.

I read him right without the benefit of seeing his later explanation

Well, no; what he said is that by “natural” he means those things which arise from a “spontaneous order.” But that explanation is itself ambiguous, depending on whether he means strictly a “voluntary order” (which may very well be designed), or instead an “undesigned order” (which may very well be involuntary), or both. Libertarian writers have often used the term “spontaneous order” to refer to either, or both, or have simply equivocated between the two different meanings from one use to the next.

If he means the former, you read him right; but then the claim is unresponsive to what it was supposed to respond to. And, since that interpretation is unresponsive, it made sense for Micha to suggest, out of motives of charity, a more responsive reading.

If he means the latter, you read him wrongly, and the claim is somewhat more responsive to Francois; but then it is underargued and almost surely false.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that your reading of him is “off the wall;” I’m not even claiming that it’s wrong. My point is that whether you read his claim rightly or read it wrongly, the claim doesn’t get Arthur very far either way vis-a-vis his interlocutors.

Arthur B.:

Racism is at best stupid not immoral.

So you say. But why do you say this? I can think of lots of examples where racism has led people to do incredibly violent things, which I think that you would clearly agree to be vicious. I can also think of lots of examples where racism has led people to do things that, while not violent, were extremely cruel. Do you mean to claim that that’s not immoral? Or to claim that the cruelty is immoral but not the racism which produced and justified it? Or something else again?

The only reason there are historical problems with racism in the US is because of forced integration through slavery (forced for the slaves that is) and then forced integration through the end of segregation (for the rest).

Your account of the history of racism and the law in the United States has an interesting lacuna. Specifically, the period from roughly 1865 – 1965.

For a hundred years of U.S. history black people and white people were forcibly segregated, partly through the use of contractual exclusions made on the market, but mostly as the result of government segregation laws. The connection between the existence of those laws and the prevalence of white supremacism among white people, especially among politically powerful and well-connected white people, was probably not entirely accidental.

However, I might also note that, as an account of “racism” in general, your explanation is somewhat lacking. There are more races of people in the U.S. who have been subject to racism, in its various forms (especially white supremacism) than just black people. The history of white prejudice and oppression against black people is a very important part of the story about American racism, but people of American Indian, Irish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Filipin@, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican, Central American, Arab, etc. etc. etc. descent have all suffered from racist prejudices, racist exclusion, and at times racist violence, whether at the hands of mobs or at the hands of state, local, or federal government agencies. But it’s very rarely the case that any of these histories involved “forced integration” of any kind prior to the mid-1960s. Therefore, I conclude that American racism and the “historical problems” associated with it probably have at least some explanatory conditions other than what you call “forced integration.”

No I don’t understand why women might want to be treated “equally” with men. Women and men are not “equal”, in fact they are not even commensurate, the whole concept of equality is meaningless here. The closest thing to what you describe would be : treated without regard for the gender… I don’t see why.

Semantically speaking, “equality” is not just used to refer to position within a quantitative range (as in “equal portions”). It’s also often also used to refer to the lack of a particular difference or distinction (as in “treat me like an equal,” or “equal opportunity,” neither of which makes any claim about comparative quantities of treatment or opportunity). So if a woman or a group of women demand equal treatment to men, then what they’re likely talking about, in perfectly good English, is treatment which doesn’t make a distinction based solely on her or their sex.

As for why a woman or a group of women would want that, well, honestly, who cares whether you “see why” or not? Presumably those who are making it have their own reasons, which many of them have explained at length in conversation, in articles, in films, in music, in books, etc. If you have some specific case against those reasons as they have been presented, it would help to explain what you’re taking issue with and why, by engaging with those arguments rather than just playing dumb. If you acknowledge those positions, but have some specific reason to go on insisting on making sex-based distinctions in how you treat other people, whether or not they want you not to make those distinctions, then it would help to explain what are your own reasons for insisting on making those distinctions nevertheless.

Arthur,

Again, I’m not denying that parents have a legitimate right to reclaim the money that is stolen from them in taxes, whether through education vouchers or through other means.

What I am saying is that voucher systems constitute a government subsidy to private schools, in virtue of forcing the parents to spend that reclaimed money within a cartel of government-approved private schools. There is nothing wrong with parents reclaiming stolen money through the voucher system, but the cartelized schools that financially benefit from federal patronage are still subject to the usual libertarian analysis and criticism offered against government subsidies.

There is no benefit that you could possibly get from a government voucher scheme that you could not get just as easily from a no-strings-attached tax break, and some specific evils that vouchers but not tax breaks would produce. So the question is, given the choice, why advocate the cockamamie transitional government scheme, rather than just advocating the simple libertarian measure?