tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post6489420923323327603..comments2024-03-25T19:48:24.624+11:00Comments on Oz Conservative: Deakin's strange contradictionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-77585449032047851522018-05-02T10:47:36.875+10:002018-05-02T10:47:36.875+10:00So basically he was a liberal Universalist by incl...So basically he was a liberal Universalist by inclination but was enough of a realist to be a pragmatic nationalist in practice?<br /><br />Sounds about right really.JAMESnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-64873207501664158932018-04-30T12:04:51.592+10:002018-04-30T12:04:51.592+10:00I think in coming years we will get to the psychol...I think in coming years we will get to the psychological origins of believing non-discriminate universalism to be Truth vs. more traditional understandings that have shaped us for millennia. Modern studies seem to indicate that a substantial part of the answer is genetically based. <br /><br />@Bruce B.: that is an excellent insight about equivalence and interchangeability. I've had related thoughts about globalism for years: money, markets, resources and people are all interchangeable by this view. But it goes to wider philosophies as well. The paradoxical idea of cherishing diversity but fearing substantive differences seems related.<br /><br />@Buck O: "...humans won't, because they can't, remain as particular people in a rapidly populating and mobile transnational world…" Another very good observation. It does seem to be the progressive strategy to change the systems and culture in order to make it difficult for its inhabitants to maintain antecedent ideas and practices, probably an intended effect and not a side-effect.<br /><br />I choose to believe that any progress that fights the natural order will not succeed in the long run.leadpbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08957439101293478340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-36688504827513742842018-04-27T11:20:44.033+10:002018-04-27T11:20:44.033+10:00Deakin, it would seem, based on your quotes, may h...Deakin, it would seem, based on your quotes, may have been anticipating or predicting a future that he seems to be suggesting that we should prepare for, as inevitable. Perhaps he is mentally preparing himself, rationalizing or justifying his ambivolence. Liberalism as progress. If he thinks and believes that humans won't, because they can't, remain as particular people in a rapidly populating and mobile transnational world, as it surely is, maybe he is torn between what he wishes and what he knows will happen. Perhaps a lament. <br /><br />All kinds of alien peoples desire to come and to enjoy the liberal West, and they are. No actual nations are extant in the West, and that was predictable in 1901. Perhaps he realized then that the concentric circles of his blood, his kind, his nation and his race were going to be broken and that there was nothing to be done to stop it. <br /><br />What would he say today? Would he be a modern liberal whose future generations include mixed marriages and a modern blend of great grandchildren? Odds are his circles would be pool of diversity. The West seems inexorably on such a course. <br />Buck Onoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-26821423465210253622018-04-27T05:26:41.924+10:002018-04-27T05:26:41.924+10:00Thanks, that takes the argument, usefully, one ste...Thanks, that takes the argument, usefully, one step further than I did.<br /><br />The argument being:<br /><br />1. If you universalise a moral relationship, such as one between a father and son, in the sense of claiming that fathers have an equal moral obligation to all young men, then you nullify the moral category itself, as the moral discriminant (fatherhood), on which the moral obligation was founded, is no longer meaningful or operative.<br /><br />2. What you can do instead is to retain the moral discriminant (i.e. that fathers have moral obligations to sons) and apply it in a universally principled way by asserting that fathers everywhere have moral obligations to sons, rather than just myself to my own son.Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-62457831076924900592018-04-26T23:55:40.297+10:002018-04-26T23:55:40.297+10:00This may be useful:
https://isteve.blogspot.com/2...This may be useful:<br /><br />https://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/07/moral-philosophy-clarified.html<br /><br />"If I call you my brother, and then turn around and call the whole world my "brothas", then the word brother - due to the absence of 'scarcity' in its usage - loses its meaning. If, that is, the very stranger right at the other side of the world is morally equivalent in value to my brother, then they pretty much become interchangeable. The trouble with this is, there's no discriminant left to oblige me to be morally committed towards one or the other.<br /><br />This is the universal moral conundrum that egalitarianism always falls into: when everybody is equally valuable, everybody is equally valueless.<br /><br />The very nature of economic scarcity and choice defies the notion of universal equivalence.<br /><br />He thinks he's pushing the Kantian "categorical imperative" but - like all who get dizzy with the nuances of the sage of Königsberg - he confuses two things here: categorical imperative in no way requires that all categories be equal in moral value. All mothers may more or less be valuable to their relative offspring, and we cannot treat the bond between a Bantu mother and her children as less valuable than our own - which, in fact, conservatives like you don't to at all - but that doesn't mean that every mother has an equal obligation to every child on earth. Such would be the total nullification of the categorical nature of the mother-child bond."Bruce B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16110868564307280515noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-21856681526070802192018-04-26T01:05:56.728+10:002018-04-26T01:05:56.728+10:00Of the three "Western" religions, Judais...Of the three "Western" religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Christianity most teaches the idea of "becoming like god" and devout Christians of a certain type are most likely to become like Deakins. I am surprised to find how many political figures that have this view were divinity students before getting into politics. They go on to do great harm, IMO.RobertBrandywinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11661602554300651862noreply@blogger.com