Different Points of View
I
love to read and analyze other points of view, but the leftists need to go easy
on the smugness and condescension.
Typical of leftists is that they believe that they “own” the field of
ethics. Obviously, it is because they
are so much smarter, deeper, and more self-aware than others. The smugness and certainty of statements
(Hugh LaFollette in particular) begin to manifest themselves almost immediately
after attempting to set a non-partisan tone at the beginning. Hugh LaFollette, in his book, “The Practice
of Ethics” reverts to such tactics after the first three chapters of his
work. By the time the reader is half-way
through his text, there is no doubt about where he stands on any issue. The purpose of this blog is not to re-hash
every issue that I had with Mr. LaFollette in his text, but to express some of
my own personal take-aways from the course.
I
Love intellectual honesty and debate. I
didn’t get the warm and fuzzy from LaFollette that he had intellectual honesty
nor was he interested in debate. He
states the obligatory counter arguments and theories that are different from
his own point of view, and then dismisses them.
Unlike
many others, I embrace vetting arguments from opposing points of view. I like to see where they have not critically
thought through their arguments and default to the condescension as mentioned
previously. Not only is the superior
tone annoying, it is used as a defense mechanism by the practitioners to stunt
opposing points of view. It is an
effective tactic. Annoy your opponent so
that he focusses on your delivery rather than thinking about countering what
you are saying. I found myself annoyed
several times with LaFollette and had to calm down and collect my thoughts
before proceeding to deliver a critically thought out rebuttal of his claims.
Personally,
another takeaway from this course is that opposing points of view can be
enriching. Many times, there are other
thought trains from opposing points of view that illuminate ideas that I hadn’t
thought of or incorporated into the subject matter. I guess one could label that as intellectual
growth. Yes, I have suffered from it
during this course!
Clever Situational Setups to make larger
points
The
beginning of the course saw us give our thoughts on the famous “Train Dilemma”. I give kudos to the person who thought of the
scenario in order to make their points about Consequentialism or
Deontology. The bottom line is that we
are all human beings and may act (or not act) out of instinct whether that
turns out to be right or wrong. The
point of the scenario was to get people thinking about the philosophy, ethics,
and morality of the choices faced in the dilemma. It was the best use of the situational setups
throughout the entire course.
The
eating out when there are poor people starving somewhere was a simplistic
measure of trying to make Americans feel guilty about their wealth and
abundance. It was a small example that
was unable to withstand the test of serious scholarship because the issue is
much larger and complex than simply a child across the world is not eating
because we are. That implies a “fixed
resource” mentality that the left manifests when it states that if we all start
out with 10 marbles (the world’s resources) then someone must be left without
marbles if the top two rich people gather at least 8 of them. Unfortunately for the left, they have yet to
realize that economics doesn’t work that way.
Capitalism doesn’t work that way.
Capitalism is a resource multiplier.
Rather than being an addition or subtraction equation, it is calculus
that sets the results (x) to some sort of power (exponential). That exponential will vary but always be
greater than 1.
Another
example of equating saving a drowning child in front of you with an unseen
starving child in an un-named nation also fails because of its simplicity. The issue surrounding world hunger and starvation
have multiple variables and are extremely complex. To equivocate a straight forward choice of
saving or not saving a drowning child is resorting to reduction absurdum to make a point.
Cherry Picking Data
LaFollette
cherry picks his data when discussing gun control. He ignores statistics countering claims of
increased violence in areas where the 2nd Amendment is seriously
defended. He downplays or dismisses statistics
of legal gun ownership thwarting crime. Finally,
he ignores the leftist hell-holes that have extreme gun violence despite strict
gun-control laws. It is as if Chicago
and Washington D.C. don’t even exist!
Both of those cities destroy his arguments for gun control.
Cherry
picking data continued with the Global Hunger chapter in LaFollette’s book
(LaFollette, 2007). Ignored are the political,
economic, and religious factors that all play a part in contributing to world
hunger. As pointed out above, leftists
rely on the static resource theory in which the rich countries “steal” from the
poor countries. Although he somewhat discounted
it, he also proposed a population stabilization theory that suggests that the
population will adjust to the resources available. Maybe.
However, that doesn’t explain Europe’s low birth rates. Additionally, war is a population limiter for
humanity as well and that was not discussed as another possible factor in world
hunger.
LaFollette’s
treatment of Crime and Punishment also seemed to cherry pick data without delving
into pure statistical baselines. He
allowed his bias and prejudice dictate where he was guiding the
discussion. I pointed out previously
that in all his arguments, he only selects other leftist authors that will
support his bias. Crime and punishment are
difficult to baseline statistics because there are so many variables. One thing is certain. Blacks commit far more crimes per capita than
their population percentage. Hence,
there are more blacks in prison for crime commissions rather than racism.
One
last citation of certainty by LaFollette was his assertion that the alleged sexual
harassment of Anita Hill by Clarence Thomas was beyond dispute. What a fool!
David Brock wrote the definitive investigative report on the entire affair
and concluded that Hill lied for political reasons and for political
payments. The only thing that is beyond
dispute is that an innocent man’s reputation has been permanently damaged.
These
are my main take-aways from the course.
I am not certain if there are better textbooks out there on Ethics, but
I take great exception to this course using Hugh LaFollette as a subject matter
expert on Ethics.
Respectfully,
John Hescott
Reference:
LaFollette, Hugh. (2007). "The Practice of Ethics" Malden: Blackwell Publishing
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