Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Bush's UN Address
I thought I'd post a link to an article I recently read along with a quick analysis, just to keep this blog alive while I continue working on my intro section (as well as an analysis of proposed tax system "solutions").
The article is a fact-checking analysis of Bush's UN speech and can be found at: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunes.php?articleid=3665
Basically, the author does a good job of identifying three major flaws in the President's rhetoric. First, Bush makes several misleading statements that distort the facts regarding the past and present situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most notably, the President's account of the state of Afghan politics and the composition of the various forces fighting in Iraq is inaccurate and/or misleading. Also, the President implies that Saddam Hussein failed to satisfy the requirements of UN resolutions prior to the invasion, which is simply untrue.
Second, Bush mischaracterizes the US's actions as they relate to UN policy and directives. The UN did not, as the President implies, authorize or state a desire for military enforcement of the security council resolutions. And, even if it did, the US is not authorized to enforce UN policies against the UN's wishes. In this sense, the American invasion of Iraq is analogous to violent, unauthorized vigilante justice.
Third, Bush presents a one-sided view of America as a world-wide protector of liberty (as democracy) and enemy of oppression that is, quite simply, inconsistent with both the historical and present state of American foreign policy. The United States has a checkered history of supporting tyrannical leaders who favor US economic and military policies. US-imposed democracies are arguably far less successful and free than those nations that adopt democracy of their own accord.
Anyway, the UN's unenthusiastic response highlights an important failure of the American public: as a people, we generally have a very narrow view of world events. Americans tend to accept the critical and mistaken assumption of American Benevolence as gospel truth from the outset. Democracy is accepted as the solution to all problems, regardless of the underlying economic and cultural concerns. Liberty, to the American public, is merely an abstraction that may be imposed on other nations by force. But, an international audience such as the UN is capable of seeing through this tribalist propaganda and recognizing Bush's rhetoric for the hollow, inconsistent and thoroughly deceptive bullshit that it is.
The article is a fact-checking analysis of Bush's UN speech and can be found at: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunes.php?articleid=3665
Basically, the author does a good job of identifying three major flaws in the President's rhetoric. First, Bush makes several misleading statements that distort the facts regarding the past and present situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most notably, the President's account of the state of Afghan politics and the composition of the various forces fighting in Iraq is inaccurate and/or misleading. Also, the President implies that Saddam Hussein failed to satisfy the requirements of UN resolutions prior to the invasion, which is simply untrue.
Second, Bush mischaracterizes the US's actions as they relate to UN policy and directives. The UN did not, as the President implies, authorize or state a desire for military enforcement of the security council resolutions. And, even if it did, the US is not authorized to enforce UN policies against the UN's wishes. In this sense, the American invasion of Iraq is analogous to violent, unauthorized vigilante justice.
Third, Bush presents a one-sided view of America as a world-wide protector of liberty (as democracy) and enemy of oppression that is, quite simply, inconsistent with both the historical and present state of American foreign policy. The United States has a checkered history of supporting tyrannical leaders who favor US economic and military policies. US-imposed democracies are arguably far less successful and free than those nations that adopt democracy of their own accord.
Anyway, the UN's unenthusiastic response highlights an important failure of the American public: as a people, we generally have a very narrow view of world events. Americans tend to accept the critical and mistaken assumption of American Benevolence as gospel truth from the outset. Democracy is accepted as the solution to all problems, regardless of the underlying economic and cultural concerns. Liberty, to the American public, is merely an abstraction that may be imposed on other nations by force. But, an international audience such as the UN is capable of seeing through this tribalist propaganda and recognizing Bush's rhetoric for the hollow, inconsistent and thoroughly deceptive bullshit that it is.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Comments
By the way, please feel free to add comments. One thing I really miss about the message board world is the lack of feedback and challenging questions from other posters. So... please, add your thoughts. I'd love to hear them.
NOTE: to comment, just click on the word "comments" below the post and follow the directions. If you want to register, feel free to do so. If not, just post anonymously. Of course, it would be nice to put a screen name to the ideas so that the blog can maintain some semblance of doctrinal continuity.
NOTE: to comment, just click on the word "comments" below the post and follow the directions. If you want to register, feel free to do so. If not, just post anonymously. Of course, it would be nice to put a screen name to the ideas so that the blog can maintain some semblance of doctrinal continuity.
Bit off more than I can chew
Well, after devoting a few chunks of time to writing the Introduction section to my little treatise, I realized a few things:
#1 - I may have been too ambitious in hoping to explain my entire philosophy on everything.
#2 - It's not good practice to write an Introduction section before you write the material. Writing is quite different from reading, and it has become apparent that it's difficult to summarize the body of a work when said body has yet to be written. I always, always write the introduction to papers after I've written the rest of the paper. But, the serial nature of the blog diary publication has flip-flopped it on me. Either I will need to wait to publish the thing until I've completed the work, or I must resign myself to the notion that the introduction will have to be heavily edited, amended, and altered during the course of fleshing out the rest of the treatise.
Anyway, I'm still working. But, to make this blog at least partially interesting while I fiddle with an explanation of how I think, I thought I'd add a list of my comments on current political issues:
(1) The Dan Rather thing
Who cares? Journalists are going to make mistakes. There's only so much one can do to verify the accuracy of a document. Rather made a mistake. Those with incentives to correct that mistake (namely, Bush supporters) did their job. The lesson people should learn from this is that one should not believe everything he hears on the television (or reads in the newspaper). Honestly, people should have known that before this occurred.
The biggest problem with this scandal is that it has distracted the public from the real issues facing us in this election. It is not important (now) to determine whether George W. Bush was a good National Guardsman. Rather, it is important to determine whether George W. Bush is a good president. And, I believe, the answer to that question is a resounding "Hell NO!" See (2) for why...
(2) Why Dubya is a bad leader
A good leader ought to make decisions in a methodical, rational manner. When a leader is faced with a decision, his first step ought to be to collect ALL relevant information. The second step should be to perform an honest, objective analysis of the information. Next, the effects of the various alternative courses of action - given the background information and the nature of the dynamic system at issue - should be predicted. Finally, the course of action that yields the optimum results - as determined by objective criteria - should be taken.
Our current president fails to apply such a methodical process to decision making. One example is his record on the environment. It has been well-documented, in respected scientific publications such as Scientific American and Nature, that W has made a practice of "filtering" his scientific advisers to exclude any scientist who dares to present objective research data that contradicts the president's preconceived notions. Basically, the president's decision-making process fails from the very outset. By stacking his scientific advisory board with conservative policy whores, the president (1) reduces his access to critical information and (2) impairs his ability to obtain an objective analysis of the relevant data. Any decision he makes will thus be based on partial, possibly incorrect or misconstrued data, and therefore has little chance of achieving an objectively optimal result. Of course, all of this ignores the fact that any president (and especially this one) may taint the fourth stage of the methodical decision-making process by acting with ulterior motives.
In any case, it is easy to see how the same problem that plagues W's environmental policy making applies to his decision to invade Iraq. From the outset, Bush focused on the thin shreds of biased and highly ambiguous data that implicated an Iraqi threat. Bush disregarded any data to the contrary. He failed to objectively analyze the evidence. Had he done so, he would have noticed that the evidence was tainted by the bias of those who reported it, lacking in breadth and based on wildly improbable inferences (is a trailer more likely to be a "mobile bioweapons lab" or a regular old trailer?). My contention is that Bush was able to talk himself into war because he failed to analyze the information. If this is true, he is not a capable leader. If it is false, then the answer is that Bush made the decision that he wanted to make because his objective goals were different than those he claims. In other words, this war was NOT designed to eliminate a threat, but rather to achieve some other objective (oil reserves is the typical answer given to this dilemma). But, the question then is whether a war, against the will of the world, was the optimal solution to achieve this hidden, ulterior motive. I find it hard to believe that pissing off the entire world is an optimal solution to any problem.
I should mention one thing really quickly. The above analysis is NOT "hindsight." Hindsight evaluation of a decision involves using the data obtained AFTER the decision and asking the question "given what we know now (i.e. after the fall-out), would it have been reasonable to make the same decision?" I have not asked that question. Rather, my line of inquiry represents a more realistic manner in which to evaluate a decision. I only ask: "given what we knew then (i.e. before the decision), was the decision objectively reasonable?" If the answer is "no," then the inevitable result is that the decision maker was irrational. That is the sad fact we have to admit about George W.: our current president is irrational. He's a loose cannon. Vote him out.
#1 - I may have been too ambitious in hoping to explain my entire philosophy on everything.
#2 - It's not good practice to write an Introduction section before you write the material. Writing is quite different from reading, and it has become apparent that it's difficult to summarize the body of a work when said body has yet to be written. I always, always write the introduction to papers after I've written the rest of the paper. But, the serial nature of the blog diary publication has flip-flopped it on me. Either I will need to wait to publish the thing until I've completed the work, or I must resign myself to the notion that the introduction will have to be heavily edited, amended, and altered during the course of fleshing out the rest of the treatise.
Anyway, I'm still working. But, to make this blog at least partially interesting while I fiddle with an explanation of how I think, I thought I'd add a list of my comments on current political issues:
(1) The Dan Rather thing
Who cares? Journalists are going to make mistakes. There's only so much one can do to verify the accuracy of a document. Rather made a mistake. Those with incentives to correct that mistake (namely, Bush supporters) did their job. The lesson people should learn from this is that one should not believe everything he hears on the television (or reads in the newspaper). Honestly, people should have known that before this occurred.
The biggest problem with this scandal is that it has distracted the public from the real issues facing us in this election. It is not important (now) to determine whether George W. Bush was a good National Guardsman. Rather, it is important to determine whether George W. Bush is a good president. And, I believe, the answer to that question is a resounding "Hell NO!" See (2) for why...
(2) Why Dubya is a bad leader
A good leader ought to make decisions in a methodical, rational manner. When a leader is faced with a decision, his first step ought to be to collect ALL relevant information. The second step should be to perform an honest, objective analysis of the information. Next, the effects of the various alternative courses of action - given the background information and the nature of the dynamic system at issue - should be predicted. Finally, the course of action that yields the optimum results - as determined by objective criteria - should be taken.
Our current president fails to apply such a methodical process to decision making. One example is his record on the environment. It has been well-documented, in respected scientific publications such as Scientific American and Nature, that W has made a practice of "filtering" his scientific advisers to exclude any scientist who dares to present objective research data that contradicts the president's preconceived notions. Basically, the president's decision-making process fails from the very outset. By stacking his scientific advisory board with conservative policy whores, the president (1) reduces his access to critical information and (2) impairs his ability to obtain an objective analysis of the relevant data. Any decision he makes will thus be based on partial, possibly incorrect or misconstrued data, and therefore has little chance of achieving an objectively optimal result. Of course, all of this ignores the fact that any president (and especially this one) may taint the fourth stage of the methodical decision-making process by acting with ulterior motives.
In any case, it is easy to see how the same problem that plagues W's environmental policy making applies to his decision to invade Iraq. From the outset, Bush focused on the thin shreds of biased and highly ambiguous data that implicated an Iraqi threat. Bush disregarded any data to the contrary. He failed to objectively analyze the evidence. Had he done so, he would have noticed that the evidence was tainted by the bias of those who reported it, lacking in breadth and based on wildly improbable inferences (is a trailer more likely to be a "mobile bioweapons lab" or a regular old trailer?). My contention is that Bush was able to talk himself into war because he failed to analyze the information. If this is true, he is not a capable leader. If it is false, then the answer is that Bush made the decision that he wanted to make because his objective goals were different than those he claims. In other words, this war was NOT designed to eliminate a threat, but rather to achieve some other objective (oil reserves is the typical answer given to this dilemma). But, the question then is whether a war, against the will of the world, was the optimal solution to achieve this hidden, ulterior motive. I find it hard to believe that pissing off the entire world is an optimal solution to any problem.
I should mention one thing really quickly. The above analysis is NOT "hindsight." Hindsight evaluation of a decision involves using the data obtained AFTER the decision and asking the question "given what we know now (i.e. after the fall-out), would it have been reasonable to make the same decision?" I have not asked that question. Rather, my line of inquiry represents a more realistic manner in which to evaluate a decision. I only ask: "given what we knew then (i.e. before the decision), was the decision objectively reasonable?" If the answer is "no," then the inevitable result is that the decision maker was irrational. That is the sad fact we have to admit about George W.: our current president is irrational. He's a loose cannon. Vote him out.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
My new home
Howdy!
After nearly five years of posting my random thoughts on philosophy, religion, science, politics and, of course, college football on Hornfans.com, I have decided to move on. The decision was admittedly in response to a request from the Powers that Be to stop posting (one of several I received over the course of my five years there). Apparently, $60 a year doesn't buy one immunity from rejection on an internet message board. Oh well... it had been apparent for some time that it was time to move on. I guess I just needed a push in the right direction.
In any case, I'm excited at the new opportunity to organize my thoughts into a single, archived collection. What I plan to do is write up a single manifesto on my worldview and post the chapters and sections here as I complete them. I'm sure there won't be much of an audience for my writings - I mean, really, the type of person who wants to spend his or her free time reading some random internet guy's philosophical ramblings is a rare breed. However, I hope to provide some insight into a rationalist perspective on life, morality, religion, the role of government and even the meaning of life. Who knows - maybe someone will find it interesting.
The following is a brief outline of my planned manifesto. It's just a first stab at organizing the topics that interest me, so I expect it to change:
In between posting my sometimes profound (but more often trite and cliche) writings, I will add comments on current events or the occasional topic that interests me. Although I no longer post at Hornfans (I can, but won't), I still occasionally lurk. Every so often, a thread will spark my imagination, and I'll comment on it here.
Oh... I suppose I should post a little biographical info for anyone who might have been linked here but has no clue who I am. I'm a married former engineer currently masquerading as a 2L student at the Harvard Law School. I have two degrees in electrical engineering, and worked for several years in the defense industry designing fancy-schmancy antennas. I'll eventually become a patent attorney, but hope to spend the next two years living the life of a wannabe pseudo philosopher. Hell, I may even don a beret and grow a coffee-house goatee.
Well, I hope that gives you a good idea of what to expect. I hope I don't fizzle out on this blog once the school year begins (in just over a week).
Regards,
BrickHorn
After nearly five years of posting my random thoughts on philosophy, religion, science, politics and, of course, college football on Hornfans.com, I have decided to move on. The decision was admittedly in response to a request from the Powers that Be to stop posting (one of several I received over the course of my five years there). Apparently, $60 a year doesn't buy one immunity from rejection on an internet message board. Oh well... it had been apparent for some time that it was time to move on. I guess I just needed a push in the right direction.
In any case, I'm excited at the new opportunity to organize my thoughts into a single, archived collection. What I plan to do is write up a single manifesto on my worldview and post the chapters and sections here as I complete them. I'm sure there won't be much of an audience for my writings - I mean, really, the type of person who wants to spend his or her free time reading some random internet guy's philosophical ramblings is a rare breed. However, I hope to provide some insight into a rationalist perspective on life, morality, religion, the role of government and even the meaning of life. Who knows - maybe someone will find it interesting.
The following is a brief outline of my planned manifesto. It's just a first stab at organizing the topics that interest me, so I expect it to change:
1. Introduction
2. Basis in Natural Philosophy
2.1. Logic
2.2. Determinism
2.3. Evolution
3. Ethics and Morality
3.1. Lack of Free Will
3.2. The Evolution of Morality
3.3. Moral Relativism
4. Religion
4.1. Religious Beliefs and Evolution
4.2. Christianity
4.2.1. Basic Doctrinal Problems
4.2.1.1. Omniscience & Free Will
4.2.1.2. Benevolent, Jealous and Violent God
4.2.2. Origins in Paganism
4.2.2.1. Historical Jesus?
4.2.2.2. Similarities to Pagan Cults
4.2.3. Modern Christianity
5. Government
5.1. Role as National Policy Optimizer
5.1.1. Cost vs. Benefit
5.1.2. Law and Policy as Optimal to the Whole
5.2. Domestic Policy
5.2.1. Rawlsian Liberty
5.2.1.1. Patriotism and Dissent
5.2.1.2. Self-Determination
5.2.2. Free Markets and Regulation
5.2.2.1. When do Free Markets Make Sense?
5.2.2.2. When is Regulation Necessary?
5.3. Foreign Policy
5.3.1. Resource Acquisition: Conquest or Trade?
5.3.2. Humanitarian Concerns
6. Metaphysical Ramblings
6.1. The Meaning of Life (there is none)
6.2. Reincarnation, Sort-of
7. ConclusionIn between posting my sometimes profound (but more often trite and cliche) writings, I will add comments on current events or the occasional topic that interests me. Although I no longer post at Hornfans (I can, but won't), I still occasionally lurk. Every so often, a thread will spark my imagination, and I'll comment on it here.
Oh... I suppose I should post a little biographical info for anyone who might have been linked here but has no clue who I am. I'm a married former engineer currently masquerading as a 2L student at the Harvard Law School. I have two degrees in electrical engineering, and worked for several years in the defense industry designing fancy-schmancy antennas. I'll eventually become a patent attorney, but hope to spend the next two years living the life of a wannabe pseudo philosopher. Hell, I may even don a beret and grow a coffee-house goatee.
Well, I hope that gives you a good idea of what to expect. I hope I don't fizzle out on this blog once the school year begins (in just over a week).
Regards,
BrickHorn
