Boortz: save the rich people first

McGentrix wrote:

Quote:
Indeed it does, which is a problem for Boortz. Remember, he is talking about a government informing wealthy citizens of impending disaster before it gets around to telling the rest of us.

No, it was individuals working in the government that informed people. The government is not a thing that can make phone calls, it is an idea. I doubt anyone received a phone call like "Hi, this is the government, we have heard there may be a terrorist attack in the NYC subways and because you are rich and ride the subway instead of taking a cab or limo, we thought you should know."

That would be a good point to make if Boortz attacked the government for informing rich people first. In that case it would be a valid defense to say: "But it's not the government, just a few irresponsible people inside governments." But Boortz is doing the opposite: he defends on principle what these individuals were doing and argues for it as a policy. That is where your distinction between officials and offices becomes moot.

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McGentrix wrote:

No, it was individuals working in the government that informed people. The government is not a thing that can make phone calls, it is an idea. I doubt anyone received a phone call like "Hi, this is the government, we have heard there may be a terrorist attack in the NYC subways and because you are rich and ride the subway instead of taking a cab or limo, we thought you should know."

A government, like any corporate body, can only act through its agents. When a policeman beats an innocent suspect, it is the policeman's employer that gets sued. Thus, when an agent of the government calls on the phone, it is the government that is responsible for the call.

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Isn't it enough that the rich will have a much better survival rate even if they are not informed in advance of some catastrophe? They are the ones with transportation and money to leave and live comfortably somewhere else. Look at New Orleans for the most recent example.

For the most important members of the government, there is a mountain in Colorado Springs, specifically outfitted for the continuance of our government, ready and waiting any time there is an emergency.

How many advantages do the already advantaged deserve?

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Here's a thought:

Boortz wouldn't have pre-warned or saved Mother Theresa.

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BBB
Boortz is an unrepentant Social Darwinist.

BBB

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joefromchicago wrote:

A government, like any corporate body, can only act through its agents. When a policeman beats an innocent suspect, it is the policeman's employer that gets sued. Thus, when an agent of the government calls on the phone, it is the government that is responsible for the call.

In the UK/Australia/New Zealand and I think Canada this doesn't apply. Leaving aside for a moment the issue of criminal liability for assault and looking at the civil liability for battery it's the case in those jurisdictions that there is no vicarious liability. The individual police officer is sued, not the employing agency. Why should I mention this? It's to point out that a police officer in those jurisdictions is not an agent of the government or the employer but is a quasi-judicial officer with independence of authority and action. I won't go on about this but it is a stark difference between policing in the US and in the other common law jurisdictions. It's important to note the difference because in those jurisdictions police officers (but not government agents) can't be ordered to act at the behest of government. This has major implications for domestic arrangements concerning legislation to deal with the war on terra.

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WWJS?

(Who would Jesus save?)

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Re: BBB

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Boortz is an unrepentant Social Darwinist.

Please stop insulting unrepentant Social Darwinists. Spencer, Bagehot, and Holmes fit that description, and neither of them would have argued the position Boortz is arguing here. Bortz isn't a Social Darwinist. He is just an arsehole.

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I don't think that there is a ONE and ONLY definition of 'Social Darwinism'.

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People say so much stupid s**t it would be like a part time job responding to all of it. The poor are the riches force of production if they disappeared who would do the work. If the rich disarppeared who would miss them because we don't really need them. The poor and working class could easily smoke the whole lot in one day have a beer and be back to work on time the next day. Soft skinny weak men. Every once in a while this happens in history then people like Boorts don't sing the same tune. They really let themselves get way out of touch. We would just take the money they absorbed doing nothing and raise the minimum wage. Then alot more poor wouldn't mind working. I'm not really like this at least not all the way. I wouldn't want to be like Boorts. Social Darwinism? Lets do it.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

I don't think that there is a ONE and ONLY definition of 'Social Darwinism'.

That's true -- especially since nowadays, Social Darwinism is commonly defined by its enemies. These enemies, like most people, are rarely capable of fairly describing views they disagree with. As a result, there is a lot of ill-informed nonsense cicrulating in public opinion about Social Darwinism, and the term itself seems much more ill-defined than it was a century ago.

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As a consequence, surely, of Etymological Darwinism.

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blatham wrote:

As a consequence, surely, of Etymological Darwinism.

Nice point! Etymological Darwinism, plus an environment that selected for righteous indignation about Spencer and friends, as opposed to accurate information about them.

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Re: BBB

Thomas wrote:

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
Boortz is an unrepentant Social Darwinist.

Please stop insulting unrepentant Social Darwinists. Spencer, Bagehot, and Holmes fit that description, and neither of them would have argued the position Boortz is arguing here. Bortz isn't a Social Darwinist. He is just an arsehole.[/[/b]quote]

There's that, too.

BBB

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John Dewey on Social Darwinism
John Dewey on Social Darwinism:

Dewey explicitly rejected "Social Darwinism" with its self-serving and antidemocratic rhetoric about the survival of the fittest. The question is always, fit for what? Dewey learned from Huxley that even laissez faire economists must weed their garden if they want lovely flowers. Reflective creatures such as we can come to know the environmental contingencies that determine conduct. Through creative inquiry, we can transform the world according to our desires. We can create a world where everyone is fit to survive and thrive, not just those who excel at crude capitalism. Human beings often determine the conditions of selection, and there need not be any single scale of success.

The community needs individuals to perform a large array of vital functions if it is to thrive. That a given community elects to reward only a small number of those functions, say, entrepreneurial success, is a condemnation of that society. As a neo-Darwinian, Dewey knows the key to survival is diversity not homogeneity; he knows the racist is simply scientifically wrong. Dewey acknowledged individual differences and inequality in the physical and cognitive performance of various tasks, but a democratic community is primarily concerned with moral equality. Dewey remarks, "moral equality means incommensurability, the inapplicability of common and quantitative standards" (MW 13:299). For Dewey, every individual has a unique potential, regardless of any given physical or psychological inequality. The goal of education is to aid every individual to achieve their unique potential that they may make their unique contribution to society. The result is an aristocracy of everyone:

Democracy in this sense denotes, one may say, aristocracy carried to its limit. It is a claim that every human being as an individual may be the best for some particular purpose and hence the most fitted to rule, to lead, in that specific respect. The habit of fixed and numerically limited classifications is the enemy alike of true aristocracy and true democracy (MW 13: pp. 297-298).

The only way Social Darwinism can gain a foothold is by convincing the community that there are only a very few hierarchies. Social Darwinism has remained influential in the political lives of almost all capitalistic nations. It fails to understand the community as a functionally complex organism in a complex, diverse, and ever-changing environment.

source

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Yes BBB -- that's exactly what I meant by "environment that selected for righteous indignation, not accurate information."

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Thomas wrote:

blatham wrote:
As a consequence, surely, of Etymological Darwinism.

Nice point! Etymological Darwinism, plus an environment that selected for righteous indignation about Spencer and friends, as opposed to accurate information about them.

Nice to see someone attempting to rescue the reputation of Herbert Spencer, who is almost universally regarded nowadays as a philosophical dilettante and intellectual lightweight.

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joefromchicago wrote:

Nice to see someone attempting to rescue the reputation of Herbert Spencer, who is almost universally regarded nowadays as a philosophical dilettante and intellectual lightweight.

I am not surprised, since he is just as universally unread nowadays.

As an aside, how is Oliver Wendell "three generations of imbeciles are enough" Holmes regarded by American jurists nowadays? Also as a philosophical dilettante and intellectual lightweight? (And as an aside to the aside, Spencer would have been appalled by compulsory eugenics, the subject of the case in which Holmes made this infamous remark. Spencer was appalled by everything compulsory.)

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Thomas wrote:

As an aside, how is Oliver Wendell "three generations of imbeciles are enough" Holmes regarded by American jurists nowadays? Also as a philosophical dilettante and intellectual lightweight? (And as an aside to the aside, Spencer would have been appalled by compulsory eugenics, the subject of the case in which Holmes made this infamous remark. Spencer was appalled by everything compulsory.)

Holmes is revered more in the abstract than in the concrete. I doubt few people read many of his opinions any more: some of them are just atrocious (not just Buck v. Bell). Nevertheless, he could manage a good dissent every now and then.

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joefromchicago wrote:

Nevertheless, he could manage a good dissent every now and then.

I knew you'd like his strict constructionist skepticism of the substantive due process doctrine. Me, I'm more a marketplace of ideas kind of guy myself, so I like this dissent better. (And I notice that the piece you link to calls Holmes 'the most revered judicial saint', and nobody is calling him a dilletante intellectual lightweight.)

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Boortz: save the rich people first

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