Reflections From a Murky Pond

Rep. Pete Olson (R-TXs) and 10 other House Republicans have drafted four articles of impeachment against Holder. They plan on introducing these articles of impeachment as early as today, though the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) won’t commit to moving forward with any of the resolutions of impeachment.

Yet Rep. Goodlatte has little or argument with the content of these resolutions. He’s just unlikely to act upon them.

Under Attorney General Holder’s watch, there has been a lack of leadership and a politicization of the Justice Department. Scandals from the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation to the seizure of reporters’ emails and phone records in national security leaks investigations have undermined the Department’s credibility and the American people’s trust. Attorney General Holder has also politicized the rule of law by refusing to enforce laws he doesn’t like.”

The only way to restore credibility at the Department of Justice is through an improvement in the quality of leadership. President Obama should make a change in the leadership of the Department of Justice to restore the confidence of the American people in our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

This combined with the expected utter lack of support from Speaker John Boehner (“R”-OH) means that the efforts to impeach and remove Attorney General Eric Holder from office are most likely doomed from the start and that Holder will remain protected from the consequences of his myriad high crimes and misdemeanors.

A Moral And Philosophical Divide

Perhaps prophetically, the House is divided morally and philosophically on the matter of Impeaching Holder or Obama.  The House Republicans fall into two camps: those who adhere to the philosophy of Deontology and those who follow the dictates of Consequentialism. With the Senate, still being firmly in the hands of the Democrats, very unlikely to convict Holder no matter what he has done there is no point beyond doing the right thing for its own sake for the House to indict him.

Obviously, the deontologists want to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and the fact that nothing will come of it doesn’t really come into the picture insofar as they’re concerned.

Conversely but equally obviously, the consequentialists want to do the right thing but only if doing so will produce a beneficial and ethical result, which any attempt to impeach Holder won’t do since, even of the House indicts, the Senate won’t convict.

With such a fundamental philosophical and ethical divide, the House is unlikely to take any action against Holder.

The Politics of Hate and Othering

Of course, one must not make the mistake of attributing too much devotion to people, especially professional politicians. Most people don’t have a strong tendency towards letting their ethics and morality cause them to put themselves at risk. This is even more true of professional politicians since they want to keep their jobs.

This tendency towards amorality in favor of survival is exacerbated by Obama’s success, with the aid of the ever-complicit Lamestream Media, in the politics of division, hate, and othering. He’s has both successfully redefined bipartisanship and labelled any GOP dissent from his agenda as obstructionist, classist, and racist. That inherently has a chilling effect on many Republican politicians – as Obama and his handlers meant it to.

This has, from what little we’re allowed to know about him, has always been Obama’s preferred modus operandi. He divides people, gets his side to think of the opposition as the Other, and gets them to vote against them rather than to vote for him.

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So, for both philosophical and materialist reasons, I sincerely doubt that the impeachment of Eric Holder will move forward at all. Most likely it won’t even be heard or debated by the House Judiciary Committee Chairman.

Tags: America | Consequentialism | Crime | Democrats | Deontology | Ethics & Morality | Holder | Impeachment | Justice | Law | Obama | Philosophy | Politics | Republicans | US House of Representives | US Senate

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 14th, 2013 at 11:16 am and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Philosophy, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One of the more ubiquitous, and certainly one of the most strident, rants of America’s domestics enemies is that the government should tax the “rich” more – much, much more. This is presented with two generalized rationalizations: the blatant, glaring, and glaringly stupid falsehood that the “rich” don’t pay their fair share and the somewhat less stupid idea that they can afford to pay more so it’s OK to take their wealth from them.

Presenting facts backed up by numbers and charts is, by and large, useless with the Statists and Socialists that call themselves Liberals and Progressives and it’s utterly useless with their minority tenants, who foolishly see themselves as beneficiaries of this agenda. Hence, I’ll leave that aside for now.

I will instead focus on the “They can afford it” rationalization since it is not based upon falsehoods, being instead based upon utilitarianism or consequentialism. I wonder how they would respond to a similar argument on a subject that Liberals have strong and visceral feelings about – abortion.

They Can Afford Them

Let America as a nation and society outlaw the abortion of White babies but continue to allow minorities, especially the Blacks, to engage in the unsavory practice. Let America as a people go so far as to guarantee these minorities access to abortion through subsidies and funding.

Due to the striations in household economies, including access to health insurance, Whites can, more often than not, afford to have these children. While an unplanned pregnancy might be an inconvenience to them, it is unlikely to drive Whites into true poverty. Statistics show this is not similarly true for minorities.

Furthermore, there is a long waiting list for White babies. There are far more prospective adoptive parents than there are White babies up for adoption. This is sadly not true for minority babies, especially Black babies who are seven times less likely to be adopted even after their prices – euphemistically called “adoption finalization costs” – are discounted up to 33% by the various agencies.

Finally, one also has to take the modern definition of racism into account. Since 64% of the women partaking of abortions are non-White, making it illegal for them to continue to do so would cause a disproportionate impact upon these minority women. Such disproportionate impact has been held by the courts to be racist and discriminatory even if the laws or practices in question have absolutely no racial component.

As can be seen from these facts there’s no reasons based upon consequences for continuing to allow Whites to abort their babies but many reasons to make sure that minorities, especially Blacks, are continued to be allowed to do so. The Whites can afford the children and the adoption system can handle those White babies that end up in it; neither is statistically the case for non-Whites.

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The arguments above are all factual within the limits of polling accuracy and statistical analysis as applied to population groups. In point of fact, these arguments make up a large part of basis for the Liberals’ ongoing fight to keep abortion legal and have the government subsidize it. That doesn’t make this “modest proposal” any less abhorrent.

It’d be an interesting thought experiment to graph the outrage of who’s more bothered by criminalizing abortion for Whites and who’s more bothered by not doing so for minorities.

Yes, the rich can afford to pay more in taxes. That ability to pay more doesn’t mean that it’s right to tax them more just because others want their money, just as the facts of abortion demographics don’t make it right to base the abortion laws upon individuals’ and society’s ability to afford having and raising the children.

The argument that they can afford it so it’s OK to take from them is an example of the grievous flaws in utilitarianism or consequentialism.

Tags: Abortion | America | Blacks | Consequentialism | Entitlement Society | Ethics & Morality | Infanticide | Leftists | Liberals | Philosophy | Politics | Progressives | Racism | Socialism | Socialists | Society | Utilitarianism | Whites

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 at 11:06 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

President Obama’s chosen nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Elena Kagan has some “interesting” – read as willfully ignorant but not unexpected – views on the SCOTUS’ role in judging the constitutionality and therefor legality of laws, especially when it comes to Americans’ rights to freedom of speech and expression.

Obama’s Mini-me being his nominee makes more and more sense and it seems she bodes as ill for our nation as Obama so far has.

From CNS News:

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said the high court should be focused on ferreting out improper governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases, arguing that the government’s reasons for restricting free speech were what mattered most and not necessarily the effect of those restrictions on speech.

Kagan, the solicitor general of the United States under President Obama, expressed that idea in her 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review entitled, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine.”

In her article, Kagan said that examination of the motives of government is the proper approach for the Supreme Court when looking at whether a law violates the First Amendment. While not denying that other concerns, such as the impact of a law, can be taken into account, Kagan argued that governmental motive is “the most important” factor.

Yes, that’s right; Kagan believes that, while the deleterious effects of laws restricting American’s 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression can be taken into account by the Supreme Court, the government’s motives and intent should be the most important factor in their ruling. Ergo, Kagan believes that the government can limit we, the People’s constitutional rights if it’s in a good cause.

Kagan is, like Obama himself, Harvard educated so their shared belief that the ends justify the means is not in the least shocking, given their shared backgrounds.

It was a graduate and later professor at Harvard, Michael Wigglesworth who is attributed with first adding this sentiment to the body of American writings.

From the university’s founding consequentialism and subjectivism have been entrenched in Harvard’s curriculum and all or most of its graduates have been indoctrinated into these philosophies.

Yes, it makes perfect sense that a President such as Obama, who wants to “fundamentally change” America and has some serious issues with dissent would nominate Kagan, who believes that it’s OK to limit freedom of speech in a cause she or the Court approves of, to the SCOTUS.  However, this “the ends justify the means when the ends are just” mentality of Kagan’s is nothing but the misborn bastard hybrid of ignoratio elenchi and argumentum ad misericordiam, neither of which has any place in logical argument much less the highest court in America.

It does not matter whether it can be proven that the government had “the best of intentions” when enacting laws that impinge upon Americans’ unalienable rights, nor is their “noble” motives a cause to change or lessen the verdict against them. All that matters is whether or not the law or action in question violates the Constitution of the United States of America.

Elena Kagan has never had the chance to directly inflict the evils and stupidity of her views of the law upon Americans because she has never been a judge. It would be best for America if her lack of experience as a judge continued for the rest of her life.

Tags: 1st Amendment | America | Consequentialism | Deontology | Freedom | Kagan | Liberals | Obama | Politics | Subjectivism | The Constitution | Tyranny | US Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.