Clint's Reposts

> Are there times when conscientiously, peacefully breaking the law is justified as a means of effecting social change?

I am quite familiar with civil disobedience from when I became a conscientious objector in the Navy during the Vietnam war.

If you are true to your objection, you become elevated with a lightness and truth of purpose that perhaps rivals a religious experience.

In a way, you become untouchable by day-to-day events, though all around you face the spears of those you offend. Because of your faith and belief in what you are doing, you rise above the conventional wisdom - you know, or at least feel completely, that what you are doing is "right".

Thinking back to that time, I see that it requires a certain critical mass of people of like mind to enhance the experience. No doubt, the members of Al Qaeda feel the same emotions as any other civil disobedient person.

Dwell on that for awhile and you see that civil disobedience is emotional, yet primal in nature. It does effect change, as does the movement of the sun across the sky, and the changing of the seasons, and tectonic plate movements. But whether the object about which people become disobedient has a righteous, cosmic, lotus flower acceptance by God #1 is open to debate.

Clint

David wrote:
"C'mon, Clint! Man/boy marriage has got no more to do with this issue than man/girl marriage has to do with marriage as we know it today. All these slippery slope arguments are crap as far as I'm concerned. You could as well say "a man can marry a girl who is 18, so what's to stop us from letting him marry a girl who is 17... or 14... or **gasp** 10 years old!" It's all subjective!"

Response:
Well David, maybe the slippery slope arguments don't do much for you, but you've never really explained what it is you think *will* stop us (society) from allowing some of these slippery slope issues to progress. At what point will your personal moral line in the sand be crossed? What arguments will you propose when you are not in alignment with some group advancing their issue under the equal protection clause? It's easy to say all those other arguments are crap when nothing crappy appears on the horizon. But you have to remember that the S.F. debacle is the direct result of the slippery slope. Back in June, the majority on U.S. Supreme court said that the (Texas) case "does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter."

Scalia said: "don't believe it." In fact, is worth linking back to the dissenting opinion in that court case. He was right. For so many people, the slippery slope was the Texas sodomy case, not for what the court was ruling about, but for the fact that a formally "rational-basis jurisprudence" was trashed. As Scalia said: "persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else." That's what is happening in S.F. That's where slippery slopes take you.

I always thought that we elected people to create laws to stabilize the (usually forward) progression of social morals to fit society at large. Just because one feels emotionally that gays are currently disenfranchised, does that make what is happening in S.F. OK? Does their struggle rise to the level of say slavery, women's rights, etc.? Is this now a time where it is justified for S.F. to ignore state law? Is that the way the game is going to be played for the next disenfranchised group? I wonder.

Clint

David Beers in the Politics Forum wrote:

...
"It's interesting to me that the debate about same-sex marriage mostly takes place under the assumption that there is a "traditional" view of marriage that is old and rooted in the church and that same-sex marriages are departures from this tradition. Try doing a little research on the history of Christian marriages and you'll discover that same-sex marriage was fairly common in the Middle Ages. The church had an established liturgy for joining men in matrimony (not so much women, I think) and the ceremony matched up very much with the ceremony for joining a man and woman: The couple stands at the alter, joins hands, gets blessed by the priest, accepts communion, makes promises of lifelong love and fidelity, walks around the altar, there's a reception afterward, etc. Sometimes they gave each other crowns during the ceremony much like brides and grooms exchange rings. There were two Holy Roman Emperors who were married in this way to men. Heck, the early church even sainted a couple of martyrs who were felt to be models for same-sex unions. It's not clear that the saints themselves were lovers, but they were incorporated into gay wedding ceremonies by the church to drive home that the ceremony was a bond of fidelity and perfect love."

"The most famous book on this subject is John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. Boswell was the chairman of Yale's history department in the early 90s. He documents gay marriages that took place in the Roman Catholic church as recently as a couple of hundred years ago and also periods when, as now, the church decided that homosexuality is wrong. It seems that ideas about marriage go through cycles and we're just at a particular point in the cycle right now. Needless to say, there is a lot of controversy over his book--not so much over the fact that same-sex unions occurred, interestingly, but over his interpretation that they were sexual unions."
...

Response:
The popular reviews for the book Same Sex-Unions in Pre-Modern Europe did not appear all that glowing with one person saying "A fantastic misreading of history". Also, I don't see anywhere in either reference where the word "marriage" is being used. Rather, the word used is "union" - a big difference. The danger here is as one reviewer said is that we all need to be careful in reading into texts and history what would make us feel better about ourselves.

As I understand early Greek inclinations it was considered quite normal in that society for man/boy love to exist as a matter of course. Do you agree that is OK now and would you be OK with that kind of "marriage" in our society? If not, why not? If not, then surely you can have some sort of sympathy for those who feel man/man or woman/woman "marriage" is not OK, and I use the word marriage in what I consider it's original meaning.

As far as I'm concerned, the entire issue is subjective and I'm happy to leave it up to the churches to define religious "marriage" and the state laws to define legal "union". But again, lets not kid ourselves by misusing the "marriage" word as if it were Ozzie and Harriet's union.

Clint

1)Do you believe that there is an objective spiritual reality?
2)If truth is subjective, define truth.
3)If truth is subjective, is there an objective moral code?
4)If truth is objective, but our understanding of truth is subjective, how can any objective moral code exist?

These seem like pretty easy questions to answer:

(1) Put your hand in a fire. Is it cold? Why then do you pull your hand away? That is objective reality; it is also subjective reality.

(2) Put your hand in a fire. Why do you pull it away. Truth is the movement of your hand.

(3) I see your hand is burned. I ask you to put it back in the fire. Why do you refuse?

(4) You hand is burned. You better see a doctor.

That's a good response. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I do want to make a couple points. I think both Warren and I agree with you that the best possible method long term of fighting "terror-ism" is through diplomatic means. But I think where Warren is coming from is that the attack on the Trade Centers, the proliferation of nuclear technology seeking terror networks, the increasing sophistication of terror methods such as using airplanes to bring down buildings, can't and shouldn't wait for diplomatic solutions. The UN proved incapable of exerting sufficient pressure via that route; otherwise the Trade Centers would still be standing. The heart of the matter is one's opinion about WHEN military response is necessary and we disagree about that. To take a leaf from Warren:

"There is also too little appreciation of what e.g. the military historian John Keegan has been stressing in his recent journalism. Reliable intelligence has rarely been available to any power in the world's history. It is by messing in with sheer brute force that one soon finds what is going on. And this is the Bush administration's greatest success: messing in. They have not waited for an American or European city to go up in radioactive smoke before doing something."

But OK, people either buy that or they don't.

I don't get the impression Warren is an optimist at all when it comes to Iraq and the entire Islamic problem. Just read his latest for instance, "Women & Minorities" and you'll see a sober realization that Islam is winning in Iraq, not us. I think the sooner we get out of Iraq the better and I hope they stick to their timetable. There is never going to be a perfect withdrawal or ending. But we should stand ready to do this all over again if necessary in any other country that actually crosses our borders and destroys our citizens. That includes going after anyone threating to do so, if we detect it. Backed by that, we should continue the diplomatic approach. I think Warren called it the "Mutt and Jeff" act.

Clint

>Curious to hear what you all have to say. (About Homosexual Marriage)

This is a fascinating topic. First of all, you have to come to grips with what the term "marriage" means today vs an earlier age. In an earlier day, the concept was the exclusive province of religion. I'm no history expert but I can surmise that marriage arose in religious culture as a way to codify, i.e., to provide a socially lubricating framework, around the concept of the relationship between a man and a woman who were going to have kids someday. This change made marriage a civilized feature of society - escaping what no doubt was earlier a brute and unsatisfying, perhaps socially fabric tearing relationship between men and women who had no peer pressure or even concept of lifetime commitment. It provided a social reason for people to stick it out when relationships foundered. Whoever might have formed a same gender relationship in those times no doubt had no need of the entire concept of marriage, as it provided the couple nothing additional since it was children that society, particularly women, was interested in protecting.

As society evolved, the State bequeathed certain benefits upon married couples in order to ensure the survival of a fit society because nurtured children are more likely to preserve a certain predictability and civility in society then those not nurtured. Property held in common by married folks gradually was recognized legally by the law of the land and ensured even more reasons for sticking it out on behalf of the children, thereby ensuring the health of the State.

In our lifetimes we've seen all this turned on its head. Divorce is at some 50% of the population now. No longer can we count on the old ways to sustain social equilibrium. Add to this the fact that the State's social laws designed for a man and a woman provide legal leverage when relationships sour, when one of the couple dies, and so forth, and you can easily see why any couple hetero or homo would want to partake of the bounty provided by the State. And so begins the "marriage" gold rush of our times.

The word "marriage" is a loaded word nowadays. What marriage means now is to enter into the laws of leverage and privilege the State provides for couples, but also provides psychological solace from the religious sphere - those sects who will provide it anyway - as a stamp of approval, a way to be loved by society.

What's sad of course is that the meaning of the original roots of the origin of marriage have been cast aside. Today, marriage is almost meaningless in the older sense and is more about legal leverage and psychological social comfort derived from certification by society.

Recognizing this and moving on, I really don't have a problem - society evolves in fits and starts. What is most fun and interesting to me about all this marriage maneuvering of late is the fact that a small group of people, aided by a city (San Francisco) are asserting power over the dull gray of middle-of-the-road social morality, which as we've discussed regarding marriage as it used to be, is gone anyway. What will come of it no one knows, but the battle is exciting to me because this is exactly how society evolves. I am watching.

-Clint

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Suzanne Lainson

> I was arguing for different government
> intervention. We currently tax
> and give tax breaks, educate, fund R&D projects,
> have a social
> security system and Medicare, etc. So I am
> suggesting we adjust their
> emphasis to facilitate rapid economic change.

>
> If you want less government than we currently
> have, then that's going
> to require political activism as well because the
> country is not
> going that direction.
>

Yeah, I keep getting that response that we "aren't going in
that direction" whenever I mention limited government. But
as I said in my previous post: "events have a way of
rebalancing political distortions in any case." There is the
Peter/Paul principle at work here in that those who rob
Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul and
his friends.

I'm not sure that all that much political activism is
necessary - one need only wait for the payers to stop paying
when the pendulum swings too far out of kilter. Consider
California's recent woes and you can see the Peter/Paul
principle at work. The end result in California was a move
back toward limited government - a small one to be sure -
since government expansion is what caused much of their
problems in the first place. You can only tax away business
profits (Peter) for so long before things go awry.

Which takes me to the first part of your post. Simply put, I
am arguing that "we", in the form of "different" government
intervention, are entirely ill-equipped to adjust
practically anything affecting rapid economic change. A good
goal for us would be to lobby to dismantle as much as
possible the Peter/Paul environment that leads to the kind
of cronyism we are seeing at present.

Likely that is going to happen soon to some extent anyway
since government is quickly running out of Peters even here in
Colorado, and Peter's money is the fuel used by government
to carry on distorting the market. Disabling Tabor, as you
suggested earlier, will only accelerate that trend. So in a
way I'm with you there, but for different reasons.

Clint

Mark, responding to David Beers wrote:

>
> Workers, however, can also act in their own best interests. And that
> can include creating unions and boycotting companies or products.
> It's a two-way street. However, what often happens is that
> propaganda is used to convince citizens or workers that something is
> in their own best interest that isn't.

Well of course you can organize as much as you want but we've got plenty of evidence to show that really isn't as effective as it was when workers were putting in 12 hour days and kids under 16 were toiling hard. The problem is that unions made sense when it was about health and safety issues but
make less sense where job exportation, job security, and import tariffs are topics. Sure, you can buy yourself a bit of job preserving time if you can get some government official to protect your turf for awhile, but politicians come and go (well, some of them), and events have a way of rebalancing political distortions in any case. This isn't a propaganda issue, it's more a law of nature.

I did some soul searching on elance.com today and concluded that we are well into crossing the great water, where internationalism of job diversity is concerned. Spend some time on elance. While it is still rather embryonic you will quickly realize that elance, and others like them, are the ebay of technical work and a force quickly gaining traction. One can see on elance that it won't be long before any enterprising person can outbid almost any status quo American tech job with an equally capable team at much less cost. Not only that, elance, et. al. have introduced a rating system so that purchasers of technical work can shop and compare much more efficiently then previously possible.

I've come to understand from my elance investigation that I can outbid ANY U.S. firm on almost ANY type of technical work if I have the fortitude to pull foreign talent together - and often the foreigners don't need me to do the pulling either. The only thing keeping the U.S. tech work status quo from shriveling away entirely is inertia - the way talent seekers think things are, rather then how they are. As David Beers mentioned, there may be an opportunity to perform a kind of middleman aggregation for those of us in the U.S. technical field regarding bidding opportunities. As it turns out I might even be able to take business away from David if I enter his bidding space using this approach ;-).

I just finished a $20K Tablet PC job that in retrospect I could have outsourced through elance and still done well. While I'm not quite ready to take that plunge due to my own inertia (the extra money was nice), I can certainly see the writing on the wall.

>
> However, there is a third force here, and that's public policy. If I
> understand Suzanne correctly, I believe she is advocating that if
> govt is aware of certain changes occuring that can adversely affect
> citizens, then govt can adapt, change, direct, etc, public policy to
> make the change less painful or dangerous for its citizens. What is
> the purpose of govt? Is it to help large corporations? I would
> argue that the Bush administration's philosophy is to focus on
> helping large business and the wealthy, and then good results will
> trickle down to others. Or maybe most of our leaders don't really
> care what trickles down, and it's just rhetoric or a rationalization.
> Maybe politicians are acting in their own self-interest and our
> political system, at present, gives politicians incentives to raise
> as much money as possible (from the wealthy being the best approach).
> And then it's payback time later.
>

Some of us believe that public policy - which is really another way of saying government policy - is more often than not a net loss for all of us. Public policy, as you mentioned above, is driven by special interests - and likely always has been. Suzanne seems to argue for more government intervention in her posts - at least that's my take so far - but I have to respectfully disagree with many of her points.

And, as you mentioned, the purpose of government is not to help large corporations. In my world view the government is not there to help small businesses either except to provide an infrastructure that includes roads, police, fire protection, national protection, resource protection and ensuring an honest national financial environment. Most importantly, government should level the playing field which is certainly not what protectionism does. You pretty much nailed it in your paragraph above, you just have to bring it home. Let's insist the government not concern themselves with trickle down or any other such theory - that isn't their realm. Let businesses large and small take care of that.

> The answer might not be
> protectionism, but it's also not simply flag waving and false
> rhetoric and promises. Any politician can say "I will not rest until
> every American is working." It's another to take any effective action.

Jefferson said something to the effect that he wasn't a fan of energetic government as it was then always oppressive. I don't see that as flag waving, simply common sense. Effective action is personal action. The angst many of us feel regarding the job market is, in my opinion, a reflection of the many barriers to effective small business fluidity erected by too energetic a body politic. There seems to be someone from government standing at every bend in the small business road with their hand out, or with some strange law that inhibits talent escape velocity. Somehow though, in spite of it all, many small businesses thrive anyway. Perhaps you'll be working at one of those soon if you're not already.

Clint

Forum User Tao wrote: "As a Taoist I should strive to reach a level of "enlightenment" at which I can perceive complimentary forces as not simply flowing into each other, but see them as one unified system. At a certain level of spiritual enlightenment, the distinction between complimentary forces falls away, and what is left is harmony and unity of opposites, or what Lao Tzu called "the true Way"."

Response:
That's well put in the main. It reminds me of why the I Ching is such a good book because it provides images taken from our core human environment (mountains, trees, lakes, rivers, clouds) to reinforce how everything in human interaction is interconnected and perpetually rebalanced in the cosmic sense.

You said:

"but on some situations the opposing view point violates some basic premise which is important to the core Taoist value"

Thats called taking a position. The entire debate here on the politics forum is about personally held positions. We all seek to gain leverage (inject gravity) over each others held position. The constant mistake made, in my opinion, is that we tend to put people into "camps", and think that if anyone from that camp issues some position, then all the people we've labeled into that camp are of the same position. Let's be careful on that.

But to repeat what you said:

"At a certain level of spiritual enlightenment, the distinction between complimentary forces falls away, and what is left is harmony and unity of opposites, or what Lao Tzu called "the true Way"."

Can one hold a position and yet be positionless? I think so. Though I don't consider myself a Taoist, like the individuals who clew to that way, I too can hold basic premises important to my own unique philosphy's core values.

I don't consider my held values to be superior or inferior to the core Taoist values. But because of the "camp" effect, I wonder if most Taoists - the less enlightened ones at least - without admitting it, feel a bit smug, holding that their value system is somehow more enlightened then others. It's a common trap for all humans.

Even Lao Tzu, as wise as he was, could not possibly escape being a man, and therefore being imperfect where human values are concerned. The "Way of harmony and peace", while certainly appealing as a Supervalue is simply unattainable by most humans. Sure, you can practice non violence, but have kids someday and you'll find that harmony and peace can be scarce commodities.

However, "the true Way" philosophy ("what is left is harmony and unity of opposites"), in my mind, represents a priori knowledge in the philosophical sense. Or as Kant said, all knowledge is related to experience, but not all knowledge is a result of experience.

Many of course claim that a priori knowledge is how they know their own philosophy is the "most" valid. But I don't think it works quite like that. To use that as an argument belies an attempt to gain leverage - always a sign of conversionism at work. More likely, either you have the wisdom or you don't, no need to run about flashing it like a badge.

Applied to the posts on this forum, I prefer to hold a position and yet be positionless. For I have faith that things are turning out how they should, and that each person must contribute how they must in order for the true way to even exist.

Clint