I ran across an interesting old Supreme Court decision today from the mid-2000’s. It was a 7-2 decision and if I remember it didn’t get much play at the time in the press–though that was eight years ago, and I may just be forgetful. The court ruled that the police do not have a legal duty to protect any given citizen. The decision justifies a whole slew of first principle injustices–it was wrong, and we are worse off for it. Here’s how.
Month: May 2013
Divorcing Morality from Metaphysics
Religious deontologists and subjectivist relativists have something in common–both believe that they can derive moral conclusions from their metaphysical theories. This is the most significant mistake made by both groups. Here’s why.
Rethinking Realism
In international relations, realism commonly comes under attack. Realism is the belief that states are rational and that they pursue their interests and their interests exclusively through rational means. Realism is a descriptive theory–it makes claims about how the world is. Many people criticise realism on the grounds that this is very much not the whole story. It is often unclear what a state’s interests are in the first place, and there are many cases in which states act in ways that seem to run contrary to their interests. States sometimes make irrational mistakes. We know that states are not exclusively rational because we care who determines our foreign policy. If all leaders were rationally and pursued the same set of interests rationally, all leaders would be equivalent to one another in policy. Insofar as there are policy differences among different leaders, there is either disagreement about interests, more rational and less rational policies in pursuit of interests, or some combination of both of these things. This often makes realism seem reductionist. It ignores the way we construct our interests, taking them as given. It also ignores the mistakes that people make, the capacity for leaders to be incompetent. However, I do not think realism can be dismissed on these grounds. Instead, it requires re-framing.
Are People Equal?
Since Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal”, we’ve pretty much taken equality as a given. The last couple hundred years of history could be viewed as one prolonged struggle for equality, whether taken from the perspective of colonists, racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, the working classes, women, and so on down the line. But how equal are we, really? And what, precisely, are we equal in? Too often we ignore these questions and resort to Jeffersonian platitudes. Not today.
The IRS Tea Party Muddle
If you just read the news headlines today, you’d think that the IRS was the second coming of COINTELPRO. The IRS is targeting the Tea Party and other conservative, right-wing political organisations, they say. For the average citizens, this reads as though your average citizen’s political views were somehow known to the IRS, as if the IRS was going after registered republicans or members of right wing political groups individually. This is not the case. As Ezra Klein (who is really on his game lately, by the way) points out, what actually happened is quite a bit more mundane than all that.
Benjamin Studebaker 