All Favor the Common Good the question is how it Comes About

Posted by Dan Kervick, Jul 31 2010, 2:08AM - Link

I'm sorry, Kotzabasis. But your abstemious interpretation of the permissible pursuit of the common good as something that can only be the emergent result of individual action in a laissez faire economy is an anachronistic projection of latter-day libertarian values onto the much more nuanced views of the founders of the United States, many of whom were quite eager to build their new nation through energetic government, and with a far-sighted concern for the public good and national interest.

You seem not to understand the traditions of classical republicanism, civic humanism and the contractarian theories of government that formed the wellspring of American political thought. Governments are instituted to promote positive values and pursue the general welfare, not just to protect individual liberties and establish a system of "thou shalt nots".
Jefferson supported mandatory public education; he authorized the Cumberland rd. John Adams established a system of socialized medicine for seamen...

Nadine says,

BTW, I think you misunderstand kotz (often easy to do). He is not arguing that the government should have no part in building infrastructure. He says that proper government function is to safeguard individual property and liberty and trade. As long as you keep the principle in mind, you can certainly debate about what sort of infrastructure is proper to be left to government. But there should be a due process for that debate; government must be checked from just deciding and grabbing for itself without a check and balance. That's what Madison was worried about, government propensity to take more and more power to itself. The Constitutional framework was intended to be that check; but this has been steadily hollowed out and vitiated by 100 years of progressive legal thinking.

Posted by kotzabasis, Jul 31 2010, 7:43AM - Link

Nadine, thanks for clarifying my position.
Kervick

I am not suggesting the disutility or euthanasia of government as the latter is a necessary and vital institution in the affairs of its people. I am only saying that it is not its business to enact the common good as the latter spontaneously rises from the rational actions of people in their every day working affairs in the context of an unhampered free market, without however being free from some necessary at times regulation. It goes without saying that government must take initiatives both internal and external for the general welfare of the country such as education, building roads and hospitals etc and ensuring that the vital interests of the nation are protected from external or internal enemies. But all these initiatives of government which contribute to the enhancement of the common weal merely consummate the wishes of its constituents, the government does not impose them upon the latter by legislation. In democracies no government can ever succeed in implementing its policies unless these policies have some resonance among its constituents and its opinion makers, the fourth estate.

Only in certain critical circumstances, such as war, statesmen, with that unique Nietzschean combination of intellect, moral clarity, and fortitude, can go against the stream, but by their nature they are accountable neither to men nor God but to History, although, like Winston Churchill, they can still be vulnerable to the vagaries of a volatile electorate.

Carrots 'Debased Currency' in Diplomacy with Iran

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: Remembering Our Goals In Iran

By Andrew Lebovich The Washington Note May 25, 2010

One can trace a masochistic pleasure in Andrew Lebovich. He often has a craving to replace facts with fictional occurrences to his detriment, like in this case “...breakthroughs with hostile countries often occur not as a result of threats or harsh measures alone...” Present then a factual example where this has occurred, as Nadine asks.

Professor Kupchan’s proposal is a ludicrous absurdity. In this moonshine diplomacy with Iran he will be asking the latter to replace its libido dominandi to be the major power of the region and of the Muslim world with carrots, i.e., of “curbing the drug trade ...which flows into Iran” and with a “new security architecture in the Persian Gulf.” Is it conceivable to him that while Iran is risking even the great possibility of being bombed either by Israel or the U.S. in its determined pursuit to acquire nuclear weapons under whose carapace will render it supremacy in the region, it will negate this strategic goal by accepting Kupchan’s carrots?

Hardline Approach to Israel Will Harm U.S. Strategic Interests

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Those who recommend, like Dan Kervick, a reduction of aid to Israel and an open reference to its nuclear weapons by the U.S., because of an errant and arrant announcement of the Ramat Shlomo construction plans by a subordinate Israeli authority, are political and strategic dilettantes and should abstain from delving with the complex and dangerous issues of the Middle East that are beyond their understanding.

America at this moment is losing blood and valuable resources fighting a determined and dangerous enemy, which indirectly includes Iran, having only one steadfast and unflinching ally in this fight, the state of Israel. It would be unprecedented in the annals of war that a country that was involved in war would chastise its major ally in the hope that such chastisement would appease its implacable enemies. Such recommendation should be rejected tout court for its strategic ignorance and stunning dim-wittedness. As the outcome of such proposition would be to intensify and further increase the demands of the Palestinians against the Israelis, and hence push the negotiations and peace process further away and with the great danger of turning it into a war process between the Palestinians and Israelis. And the second part of the proposition, that the U.S. should bring up the state of Israel’s nuclear weapons, and to do so in the context of the Iranian ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, will injudiciously provide, if it was adopted by the Administration, an additional excuse to the Iranians and enhance the determination of the Mullahcratic regime to acquire its nuclear arsenal. Thus the Obama administration will be totally defeated in two of its major strategic goals, i.e., to clinch a deal with the Palestinians and Israelis, and to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

With such friends as Clemons and Kervick, why would Obama need to have enemies?

Fanatics are Deaf to the Dictates of Reason

By Con George-Kotzabasis

I don’t know if Tamils were the first suicide bombers prior to the Palestinians—perhaps some other commentator in this thread could disabuse my ignorance-- but my comparison was between Christians and Muslims so your point is completely pointless.

As for American pilots being suicide-bombers in the Battle of Midway, one must really overstretch one’s imagination. You totally disregard the elementary fact that America had never had a self immolating or suicidal cult in its culture, as there is definitively a suicidal cult among Muslim fanatics. So your riposte is intellectually “post less” as it cannot find the address of reason.

Certainly, stating the obvious, Muslims are human, and even the fanatics among them. But the latter, like all fanatics of whatever religion or ideology, are unreasoning humans and therefore are deaf to the dictates of reason. So your appeal to them will be a complete futile and barren exercise by you. Lastly, Thomas Hardy’s poem, by which you thought would strengthen your argument, is totally misplaced as it applies to reasoning combatants