Woty Freeman Archives: September 2003

Thursday, September 11, 2003 When something happens, we try to explain it. In particular, when there is a crisis, especially an attack of some sort, the papers always soon show a picture of people crying with the headline "Why?". One way we refer to the most awful events is by saying that we do not understand it. For example, "this is beyond comprehension" or "this is unfathomable horror". But most people don't really mean that. Most people think that events are explicable, and that it is important to find the explanation in order to know what to make of events, and in order to know how to act. "Why?" is an utterly seriously question. Because we ask that question, and because we are utterly serious about finding an answer, today we are better off than we were two years ago. We know what happened, and why. It's now a comprehensible horror rather than an incomprehensible one. Also, the threat no longer seems infinite. There are things being done, and they are working. The world is getting better, and we have not had another large attack. If we had not been seeking an explanation, we would have no useful knowledge about who did it and what they were trying to accomplish. Without such knowledge, we would not be able to craft any reasonable attempts to eliminate the threat. We would not be able to predict what our enemies might do, because we would be making estimates based on what we'd do in a similar situation. That would not supply accurate information about the intentions of an enemy with radically different aims than we would have. We would not be able to fight effectively, because we would not understand. But because we ask why, and because our "Why?" is serious, we can understand and we can achieve our aims. Posted by Woty @ 01:48 PM EST [Link] Friday, September 5, 2003 An argument I've heard in favor of Campaign Finance Reform goes something like this: You can't give money to a judge. You can't give money to a cop. So why should you be able to give money to a politician? Their implied answer is that you shouldn't. They think it ought to be against the law to give private money to political candidate's election funds and that campaigns ought to be financed with public money instead. But there is a better answer to this question. Judges and cops work for the state � they're not supposed to be partisan and they're not supposed to have their own agenda. They are supposed to impartially enforce the law. On the other hand, politicians are supposed to be partisan and follow their own agendas. They are supposed to have positions and values that get them elected, and they aren't supposed to stay in office unless they have a mandate from the people to enact their agenda. They are not the employees of the state; or even of the people as a whole. They work for the people who elect them and provide their mandate. This makes them fundamentally different from judges. Posted by Woty @ 06:40 PM EST [Link] Thursday, September 4, 2003 I generally prefer to write "G-d" rather than "God", but not because I think that there is any halachic reason to write G-d rather than God. I haven't encountered any compelling arguments that writing "God" on a blog is halachicly prohibited. For that matter, I don't think that would be a sufficient reason in itself. People are capable of discovering moral truths; we don't have to wait for divine revelation or try to derive moral knowledge from past divine revelations. Because morality is true, it is knowable. But there is a reason unrelated to halacha that it can make sense to write "G-d" rather than "God": Jews do it, and Christians don't. As writing the word that way is Jewish, doing so makes it a bit clearer that I am talking about G-d rather than "Jesus and his father". Posted by Woty @ 10:40 PM EST [Link] Bush wants Iraq to have the best thing that we have, because it is good and because Iraq will be dangerous to us so long as they don't have it. He thinks that the most precious things we have are good values and institutions that make it easier to act on them than to act against them. Bush wants the Iraqis to live in a free society with institutions and values that make it possible to run things well and make continual improvement. He wants improvement to be a normal part of the political process, rather than something is not possible short of a revolution. He wants Iraqis to be able to create knowledge and build on the ideas of the past as part of normal life. He wants them to be able to run businesses in a free market rather than being forced into poverty. He wants the Iraqis to have all of this and more. He is on the side of Iraqis who have good values and want to be able to act on them better. He wants Iraq to be ruled by the decent and half decent Iraqis rather than inhuman dictators. He wants to defeat those who want to destroy us and keep places like Iraq in squalor. In his terms, he wants God to bless Iraq. American villepinists, in a twisted sort of way, also want to share our best with the Iraqis. These villepinists think that we have lost our soul, and that the best thing we have is a memory of rebellion. They think that the highest thing we ever did as a nation was to through off British rule and declare liberty. They think that we've betrayed the vision and allowed our nation to be taken over by the values that we once nobly fought against. Accordingly, they think that the most sacred thing anyone can do is to keep fighting the bastardized values, literally and figuratively. The villepinists think that our enemies are deeply flawed and not quite worthy of approval, but they also admire them a bit. They think it is deplorable that our enemies suicide bomb and force women to wear burkas and torture people and destroy their own holy sites, but they are willing to ignore all of that. They are willing to forget it, because they think the enemies have the soul that we have lost. The enemies are fighting the American values that the villepinists consider to be a bastardization of the real America. The villepinists wish they could fight these values too, but they don't know how, and they can't quite want to. For those who seem to be willing and able to fight these values, these villepinists are willing to forgive almost anything.