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To: King Prout; Alamo-Girl; marron; hosepipe; Heartlander
just to reiterate the terms:

Given:
1. “might” is defined as ability to impose positive and negative consequences, immunity to reprisals, lack of needs requiring exogenous sources of fulfillment, and endurance.
2. “right” in this application specifically excludes mathematically correct solutions to specific problems, mechanically sound design, etc... we are speaking SOLELY of the form/concept of “right” tied to “morality”

Postulate:
“right” is always defined by might, and that definition's range and power is always proportionate to the might of the one making the definition.

Challenge:
Provide one case where the above is clearly not operant….

to “answer a challenge” is to rise to a challenge to provide whatever item, innovation, example, or solution the terms of the challenge demand.

so, in this case, the “answer” you would put forth would be one which you believe meets the challenge to name a situation or example in which morality-linked definition of right, as limited in the given, is NOT made by might, as defined in the given. It is satisfactory to demonstrate how the terms of the given are incorrect, thus falsifying the terms of the challenge, if you can do so.

note: "assert" does not equate to *demonstrate*

surely you know how a dialectic works?

Just making sure we’re on the same page here, King Prout!

Sure I know how “dialectic works.” Hegel and Marx gave such exemplary examples, the first “theoretical,” the other spectacularly “practical.” Which is why I prefer dialogue, or debate.

Anyhoot, it’s easy to give an example of “a situation or example in which morality-linked definition of right, as limited in the given, is NOT made by might.”

My example: The Constitution of the United States of America or, more precisely, the moral order it established.

And so I dispute your Postulate. Unless the free consent of We the People can be construed as "might."

You mentioned or rather suggested you didn’t have much use for Plato, preferring Aristotle instead, Plato’s great pupil.

Would that be this Aristotle:

Of things constituted by nature some are ungenerated, imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to generation and decay. The former are excellent beyond compare and divine, but less accessible to knowledge. The evidence that might throw light on them, and on the problems which we long to solve respecting them, is furnished but scantily by sensation; whereas respecting perishable plants and animals we have abundant information, living as we do in their midst, and ample data may be collected concerning all their various kinds, if only we are willing to take sufficient pains. Both departments, however, have their special charm. The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their number and dimensions. On the other hand, in certitude and in completeness our knowledge of terrestrial things has the advantage. Moreover, their greater nearness and affinity to us balances somewhat the loftier interest of the heavenly things that are the objects of the higher philosophy. Having already treated of the celestial world, as far as our conjectures could reach, we proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the kingdom, however ignoble. For if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy. Indeed, it would be strange if mimic representations of them were attractive, because they disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and the original realities themselves were not more interesting, to all at any rate who have eyes to discern the reasons that determined their formation. We therefore must not recoil with childish aversion from the examination of the humbler animals. Every realm of nature is marvellous: and as Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful. Absence of haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in Nature's works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of her generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful. — De Partibus Animalium.

Thanks so much for writing King Prout!
1,181 posted on 05/03/2006 6:24:09 PM PDT by betty boop (Death... is the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.)
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To: betty boop

just to reiterate the terms:
Given:
1. “might” is defined as ability to impose positive and negative consequences, immunity to reprisals, lack of needs requiring exogenous sources of fulfillment, and endurance.
2. “right” in this application specifically excludes mathematically correct solutions to specific problems, mechanically sound design, etc... we are speaking SOLELY of the form/concept of “right” tied to “morality”

Postulate:
“right” is always defined by might, and that definition's range and power is always proportionate to the might of the one making the definition.

Challenge:
Provide one case where the above is clearly not operant…

*****

I was thinking more along the lines of classical Socratic dialectics, rather than Hegelian or Marxian nonsense.

Aristotle began steeped in agreement with Plato, but his later (and more important) thinking trended heavily towards ever-purer experientialism, the basis of empirical naturalism.

As to your example:

While the Founders did try to set Law apart from the whim of rulers AND the fickle fancy of the mob, they did not divorce the order that document codified from the force and might which makes it possible.

You will note that they created the LEGISLATURE, empowered to inflict various forms of consequence upon the people, and define penalties for disobedience. You will note that they created an EXECUTIVE branch, detailed to enforce the law and punish breakers of that law.

You will also note that the Founders made the Constitution exceedingly durable, very difficult to alter. As stated in the given: endurance. They also made it difficult to remove elected and appointed officials: a high level of immunity from consequence, though not an absolute one. And you will surely be aware of the durability of laws on the books - even long after their supposed purpose is gone, they themselves almost never seem to go away, do they?

The authority of the Constitution and the government it enacts extends only as far as the majority of the populace agrees with it. If sufficient mass of the people came to actively disagree with it, the might of that group would exceed the might of whatever group stood to enforce the Constitution, and the basis of our government would fail.

The real threat to our republic is a slow erosion within the federal capital's culture of the agreement of the officials to abide by constitutional limitations, a slow usurpation of powers, and a slow removal of legal restraints placed upon them. One of the ways they accomplish this is to muddle public understanding of Civics. In earlier times, most Americans had a basic understanding of the denotative meaning of the Constitution, and could accurately judge the words and actions of officials against that template. No longer - the average citizen is so horribly ignorant and so thoroughly trained to wasteful idiosyncracy that they have no real allegiance to the Constitution and no basis from which to judge the lawfulness of their masters.

They divide us into squabbling self-interested factions, lead us to waste our might one against the other, while they remake themselves into nobility, gods on earth, ever mightier, and ever more able to redefine right and wrong to suit their own desires.

It is a classic "boiling the frog" scenario, in which the rulers slowly accumulate more might for themselves, slowly gain ever greater insulation from backlash, and do everything they can to prevent the people from waking up and remembering that, taken together, they themselves are mightier than any ruler.

And this is without question at this time a deliberate process, and has been since at least 1968, probably since at least 1936. Wealth-redistribution (ever-growing imposed consequences: armed robbery and largesse), partisan groupthink indoctrinated into sub-demes throughout public education, and the never-dead campaign to take firearms away from the private citizen. They know right is defined by might, even now, even here.

Try again.


1,219 posted on 05/04/2006 6:48:21 AM PDT by King Prout (many complain I am overly literal... this would not be a problem if fewer people were under-precise)
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