Posted on 05/03/2002 9:35:57 PM PDT by Caleb1411
"'Logic!' said the Professor half to himself. 'Why don't they teach logic at these schools?'" Professor Digory in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was complaining about the fatuous reasoning of the children in the novel who did not believe in the existence of Narnia.
Today the problem is not just that logic is untaught. Many people, including some of the most well-schooled, do not believe in logic. How else to explain the almost comically bad thinking that passes for policy analysis of some of the most important issues of our day?
When the Supreme Court legalized "virtual" child pornography (see "Images have consequences," May 4), many of the nation's most prominent newspapers defended the decision. Portraying themselves as First Amendment fundamentalists, they editorialized that even the most offensive speech deserves protection; otherwise, all of our freedoms are in jeopardy.
And yet, nearly every newspaper that took this position also pushed for a campaign-restrictions bill that would limit political speech.
Do they believe the founders of the nation, when they drew up the Bill of Rights, intended to protect computer simulations of adults having sex with little children—and not protect American citizens expressing their political opinions in the course of electing their representatives?
And even if liberal journalists reject the "original intent" approach to constitutional interpretation, if we need to protect all speech no matter how offensive, then shouldn't this apply to speech that they find offensive, namely that of special-interest groups, lobbyists, and grassroots activists?
Or consider the cloning debate. Most everyone agrees that using cloning to produce a human baby is wrong and should be banned by law. But many people, including influential scientific groups, believe that "therapeutic" cloning, producing embryos whose stem cells and other genetic material can be used to treat disease, should be allowed.
In other words, it is wrong to use cloning technology to produce a living baby. But it is right to use cloning technology to produce a baby that is killed for its spare parts.
Surely, therapeutic cloning is more of a moral problem than reproductive cloning. The latter is wrong too, since it violates God's design in the natural order, which ordains reproduction by means of sex, an arrangement that results in the family, the offices of husband and wife, father and mother. But a cloned child would not be a soulless monster, just the twin of some adult, and would be entitled to all the rights and value of any other human being.
But to clone a child and to deny his rights and value by not letting him grow up, instead using him as a macabre medicine for sick adults—surely this is even more problematic morally. Indeed, a major reason why reproductive cloning is immoral is that it requires the production of scores of embryos before one actually "takes," with the other embryos then being destroyed.
Of course, conservatives are often accused of being similarly contradictory. How can you be against abortion, goes one charge, but be in favor of the death penalty?
But clear, logical thinking requires the ability to make distinctions. It is wrong to kill an innocent person. It may not be wrong for the state to kill someone who is guilty. A baby in the womb is not the moral equivalent of a convicted serial killer or an al-Queda terrorist.
The contradiction is really on the other side. How can you oppose the death penalty, but be in favor of abortion? How can you be against executing Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 innocent men, women, and little children, but be for executing, without trial, a baby who isn't even born yet and who hasn't hurt anybody?
Fallacies like these litter the field of public-policy discourse. Why is the American Civil Liberties Union so zealous for the First Amendment, but so indifferent to the Second Amendment? Aren't they in the same Constitution?
How can public-school teachers get away with saying that standardized tests encourage rote memorization and "teaching to the test" when the tests they are complaining about involve reading paragraphs, answering questions about them, and doing math problems, measuring reading and math comprehension, but not rote memory at all? And why is the ability to memorize a bad thing? Why do those who believe in euthanasia think suffering merits the death penalty? Hasn't it always been more despicable to kill a sick, helpless person than someone who can fight back? Don't sick people need to be cared for, not exterminated?
Mental clarity is generally a prerequisite for moral clarity. And being able to recognize bad thinking is necessary for citizens in a free society—otherwise, they will not remain free very much longer, but be at the mercy of the spin doctors and the demagogues.
Maybe I'd/we'd believe your contention if it were supported. Why is this article no better than what it criticizes?
But clear, logical thinking requires the ability to make distinctions. It is wrong to kill an innocent person. It may not be wrong for the state to kill someone who is guilty. A baby in the womb is not the moral equivalent of a convicted serial killer or an al-Queda terrorist.This seeming inconsistency vanishes once you add to the equation the ever-present death culture our current cultural mavens are foisting upon us.
The paradigm has shifted. Why? Because the central thinkers and planning geniuses of our last few generations believe more in the bleak mathematics of Thomas Mathus than they do in our God-given ability to figure our way out of what they believe is the inevitable "population bomb."
So, no longer is innocent life to be cherished and protected.
Abortion is encouraged, because it promotes the reduction of the number of humans.
Common murder is no longer discouraged for the same reason, but also for the added bonus of terrorizing the weakest in society and justifying Draconian excesses as "the needs" arise.
Gee, I wonder why its becoming possitively dangerous to defend yourself? Defending yourself runs contrary to the new paradigm -- you're no longer innocent! You're guilty simply for existing. You're adding to the planet's human excess.
No. Once you start thinking like the enviro-wackos who get all the funding and the press, and help lay the groundwork for this megalomaniacal blood-lust, it all makes sense. Very grim, anti-JudeoChristian God, sense.
In short, don't ever forget what I've shortly laid out here, and a great deal that will happen in the next few years will no longer appear so contradictory.
BINGO. The root cause is that damned kid!
"Why do they all hate us so much?"
SMACK! "I don't care, but I can tell you why they won't be breathing much longer..."
Veith isn't into navel-gazing root-cause analysis here; he's inveighing against contradictory (illogical) positions espoused by those who lack the fortitude or the moral candor to defend their whimsical reasoning.
LOL. Going back to the Kid, I am going to stop with the smack because the next why is "why is he around to ask why?" That starts getting real dicey at that point.
I was not critiquing the article I just believe that "logic" applied" to public policy does not work. It is "logical" for some to see the court ruling as a threat to the 1st amendment but it is just as "logical" to see the decision as a validation of Child pornography. There are examples each side can use to validate their "logic" the court used movies,"lol". The fact is, law for example, is not a logical construct. A law implies force and it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. While that is true is it "logical" to not pass a law on those grounds? No because that is like saying a hammer is good when used by a carpenter but bad when used by an angry husband so therefore hammers cannot be manufactured.
Sadly, you have described an intellectual integrity that 99% of the Human Race do not posses.
I agree. One can argue all day long with a dedicated proponent of an opposing view and get nowhere, because the logic one uses, and the facts one chooses to cite to support one's position are pre-selected to arrive at the preferred conclusion. Whereas, in the larger picture, the conclusions are actually arrived at well in advance of any proferred logical argument or adduced facts -- based on the world view one subscribes to. And that world view is the result of many extra-logical factors, such as worldly experience, intuition, peer opinions, religous/mystical experiences, upbringing and inherited psychological temperament. Besides, which is easier, to convince a life-long liberal to change his opinions 180 degrees, or to convince an apathetic conservative to get out and vote?
I am through arguing with the ideological captives of cultural marxism, although sometimes I will post a sarcastic reply to an exceptionally stupid comment, just to burn a liberal's a**, or for the benefit of uninformed lurkers who may take a liberal comment at face value if left unchallenged.
LOL. Intuitively I would go with getting the conservative to vote but man that is a close call.
I think some would decry the ruling not so much as a threat to the First Amendment, but as an unwarranted, unethical, legislation-by-the-judiciary extension of it. That notwithstanding, Veith's larger point seems in this instance to be, how can First Amendment champions grant free-speech freedom to pornographers (simulators or no) while denying the the identical freedom to citizen groups who want their voices to be heard in the electoral process?
The fact is, law for example, is not a logical construct. A law implies force and it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. While that is true is it "logical" to not pass a law on those grounds? No because that is like saying a hammer is good when used by a carpenter but bad when used by an angry husband so therefore hammers cannot be manufactured.
Hmmm, sounds suspiciously like the Second Amendment-abridging arguments of the likes of Chuck Schumer.
Maybe logic will have to yield to ethics or "natural law". . . and then we'll really see some superheated rhetoric.
I'll pick this thread up tomorrow; I need a little sleep before my 5 a.m. wake-up call.
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