"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Nov 19, 2010

Insubstantial Queries

If you argue that men must be governed, do you really have an argument against a kind or type of government?

If you believe that government has a purpose, does that purpose follow from the use of government, or the outcome of governing?

How do you measure the outcome of government? What standards of judgment can you, or would you, use? Can those standard possess any objectivity if the people articulating them developed their morality and conceptual frameworks under government?

How do you compare and define the purpose of government in relation to the intended outcomes? Do you judge government by the disparity of effect between statement of purpose and the reality of outcome? Do you determine the type of government needed according to the purpose, or the intended outcome? How do you know that a social circumstance results from government action, and not instead as a reaction to it?

6 comments:

Randal Graves said...

I dig the template change, but next time, more American flags, okay?

Insubstantial Answers:
No [insert Other of the Week].
Yes.
Maybe.
Ask Again Later.
All Signs Point To Yes.
No.
No.
Maybe.
Yes.

Jack Crow said...

Randall,

I will get those flags, but only if they are (a) dipped entirely in black paint and/or (b) invisible.

Respect,

Jack

Anonymous said...

Ay-yi-yi... Diogenes, his tub-o'-home and his feral dog pals have left the building!

Leaner, meaner format?

ALSO: not insubstantial at all.

Jack Crow said...

If I can find a way to bring Diogenes back without being all off center and choppy - his tub goes back where it belongs.

Leaner format was just an attempt to use both sides of the page, since I've accumulated 120+ links to places better than my own.

Thanks, Charles.

Landru said...

With apologies to Randall for the ripoff of his brevity without resort to his better good humor, and with apologies to the host on general principle:

1. Sure.

2. Neither, and it's not binary.

3. Why? Depends. Of course, and the question sneers at the answer (bonus for illustrations here).

4. Meaty. No. Both, maybe, not binary. Relies on assumptions not in evidence.

On format: nuh-uh, not going there, respect your reasoning, and, with mortal embarrassment, thanks to Charles for enlightening me that the guy with the dogs wasn't Jesus.

Randal Graves said...

Heh, landru, I always try to get the snark out first so I don't have to pretend I'm smarter than I actually am.

And gotta second charles, not insubstantial questions, but that's a fucking book-length essay in that bunch.