Altruism

I am no longer one of the cynics that believes an altruistic act is logically impossible, given human nature.

Marx and Nietzsche

We've been reading Marx and Nietzsche in CIE lately, and the contrast is humorous in some ways. One way that jumped out at me is their attacks on the Church. Marx claims that the church is an instrument that the rich use to oppress the poor. Nietzsche says that it is a means for the lower classes to subversively oppress the upper classes. The Church, as always, is attacked on all sides, for contradictory reasons.

G.K. Chesterton once said something i find very penetrating: Suppose you were to hear about a man you had never seen. Some people told you that he was too tall, others that he was too short, some that he was too wide, others that he was too thin, and so on. What would this man look like? One explanation is that he is a very strange shape. But the more likely explanation is that he is the right shape, the definition of mankind.

The fact is that there is nothing wrong with the Church (capitalized). There are many things wrong with the church down the street, most likely. But it is a case of mankind failing the Church, not the Church failing mankind (T.S. Eliot, Eighth Chorus from The Rock).

Can there be morally neutral laws?

WARNING TO TREVOR: extreme social conservativism below!

The whole debate over homosexual marriage boils down to whether or not America should have moral laws, or morally neutral laws. The marriage admendment is about legislating morality. So here are my thoughts:

There can never be a morally neutral law. A law forbids and affirms certain actions. If a law forbids an action, then it is equivalent to saying that this action is wrong. Affirming an action claims that it is right. Ethics deals with the rightness and wrongness of action. You cannot use the terms right and wrong without working from a moral framework.

Therefore, this idea of not legislating morality is impossible. What about private as opposed to public morality? This is the classic argument: as long as you don't infringe on anyone else's freedom, then you are a-okay. I don't think most people that say this really mean it. One example:

Suppose one person, Smith, wishes to kill and eat another person, Jones. If Jones is fully willing to do this (for whatever reason), and signs a legal document agreeing to this, then it's entirely personal morality. The state cannot intervene, except to confirm that all parties were consenting adults. This is not that far from reality, as bizzarly disgusting as it is. There was a real case in Germany similar to this hypothetical case recently.

With this said, I don't support the Marriage Admendment. We already have the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton, that affirms the concept that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is enough for for the importance of this issue.

Kerry dominates Super Tuesday

John Kerry won 9 of the 10 primaries yesterday. Howard Dean won Vermont. Here are the full results. Edwards doesn't really have a chance now. He couldn't even win Georgia! I expected Kerry to win Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but Edwards would have to be strong in the South to capture the nomination. It's true that Kerry only has 60% or so of the delegates he needs to capture the nomination, but Edwards is far behind, and people are more and more likely to vote for Kerry as he continues to win.

This means that GWB will soon start gearing up for the race, I'd imagine. He fired that initial shot some weeks ago, but the contest will start in earnest soon.