Posted on 06/11/2014 6:23:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Both libertarians and conservatives want to keep America safe. We differ on how best to do that. Most libertarians believe our attempts to create or support democracy around the world have made us new enemies, and done harm as well as good. We want less military spending.
Some conservatives respond to that by calling us isolationists, but we're not. I want to participate in the world; I just don't want to run it. I'm glad Americans trade with other countries -- trade both goods and people. It's great we sell foreigners our music, movies, ideas, etc. And through dealing with them, we also learn from what they do best.
On my TV show this week, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton will tell me why my libertarian skepticism about the importance of a "strong military presence" is "completely irrelevant to foreign policy decision-making."
Bolton thinks it's dangerous and provocative for America to appear militarily weak. He supported the Iraq War and says that if Iran were close to getting nuclear weapons, the U.S should attack. "I will go to my grave trying to prevent every new country we can find from getting nuclear weapons," because if they do, "it's going to be a very dangerous world."
He criticizes Presidents Barack Obama's and George W. Bush's failed attempts at negotiation with Iran, "negotiation based on the delusion from the get-go that Iran was ever serious about potentially giving up its nuclear weapon program."
That kind of talk makes Bolton sound like a hard-headed realist. Who wants to be naive like Bush or Obama? But hawks like Bolton ignore parts of reality, too.
They are quick and correct to point out the danger of Iran going nuclear. They are not as quick to talk about the fact that Iran has a population three times the size of Iraq's -- and the Iraq War wasn't as smooth or short as then-Vice President Dick Cheney and others assured us it would be.
If it's realistic to acknowledge that America has dangerous enemies, it's also realistic to acknowledge that going to war is not always worth the loss of money and lives, and that it makes new enemies. War, like most government plans, tends not to work out as well as planners hoped.
I asked Bolton if he thought the Vietnam War was a good intervention. "Obviously, the way it played out, it was not," he said, but, "it's always easy after the fact to second-guess."
Bolton also acknowledges that the Iraq War did not go well, but then adds, "Where mistakes were made was after the military campaign." The U.S. was unprepared for the civil war that broke out. The U.S. also failed to turn utilities and other state-run companies in Iraq over to the private sector, maintaining poorly run monopolies on energy production and other essential services, often squandering billions of dollars.
It might be seen as a harsh lesson in the importance of planning for the aftermath of toppling a bad regime. But we libertarians wonder: Why assume government will do better next time?
Occasionally government acknowledges mistakes in domestic policy -- but that doesn't mean it then becomes more efficient. It usually just spends more to try, and fail, to fix the problem. It's the nature of government. Politicians don't face the competitive incentives that force other people to make hard decisions.
Candidate Obama garnered support by criticizing Bush for costing money and lives through a protracted stay in Iraq. But that didn't stop Obama from putting more money and troops into Afghanistan.
In his first term alone, Obama spent about three times as much in Afghanistan as Bush did in two terms. Did we win hearts and minds? I don't think so. The Taliban may still retake the country.
Our military should be used for defense, not to police the world.
It is disturbing that so many people actually see the mind as no more than the physical brain.
Thank you so much for those beautiful Scriptures, dear brother in Christ, and thank you for sharing your insights!
Thank you so very much for your fascinating testimony, dear hosepipe! Indeed, I believe the physical brain operates more like a receiver/transmitter for the spirit of a man.
Indeed, dearest sister in Christ.
But this attitude is nuts. For if the mind is nothing more than the physical brain, the obvious next question is: Who says so? This would appear to be an opinion. If it is, then whose opinion is it? [Not to mention how would he defend it?]
Plus there is the attendant physical problem of how one orients a non-physical, immaterial, self-conscious "I" into the paradigm of material Nature, in this case expressing as a human brain, a physical entity.
Probably such observations seem pretty nutz.
Still, I wonder how many people of Reason actually take the time to think about thinking itself.
That is, to discover what are the basic elements of thought itself, and how do they interrelate? What is involved in an analytical process? And what involved in a contemplative one?
On this question, I got some really good clues from a couple of sources who could not be more unalike in their personal dispositions: the great American psychologist and Pragmatist philosopher, William James (1842–1910); and Antonio Rosmini, S.J., recently beatified by the Church [November 2011 IIRC].
Regarding Rosmini, the Stanford Encyclopedia relates the following:
Antonio Rosmini (1797–1855), Italian priest, philosopher, theologian and patriot, and founder of a religious congregation, aimed principally in his philosophical work at re-addressing the balance between reason and religion which had largely been lost as a result of the Enlightenment.Whats is fascinating to me is that, on my reading, the two men came up with more-or-less the same findings, regarding what might be called the structure of the mind, of human intellection.
Both came up with the same three ingredients (so to speak): (1) the self-conscious "I", which orchestrates and mediates the thought process; (2) sensory perception (and its concomitant non-sensory apperception, as reflected at the "I" level; and (3) memory (oh my, such a pregnant topic!).
Neither man has yet spoken of a "brain" here.
And I have no reason to believe either man doubted that the mind "uses" a brain to effect its purposes.
Then again, this sort of "stuff" isn't everybody's "cup of tea." I expect cricket conditions will soon obtain ( :^) )....
Thank you so very much for writing, dearest sister in Christ!
Some people see the brain as a computer made of meat. I tend to see it as a wireless router made of meat. :)
So beautifully said, dear brother in Christ!
Indeed, it stands to reason: As each unique individual human person is made imago Dei, in the image of God — I AM — we are the "lower-case version" of our Source, our Creator....
And indeed, one cannot "divide asunder" what is eternal in us from what is the living force of our mortal, temporal existence; or as the Greeks might say, our "form" cannot be separated from the Ground of our mortal Existence, for both have the same Source: Pure, divine (meaning: having an extra-cosmic origin) Being. Our existence is a "participation" in that Being. Otherwise, we mortals would not exist.
Plato defined this Being as the God Beyond. The "Beyond" part Plato attributed at least in part to a profound limitation of the human nous — reason, intelligence, mind — in comparison with eternally divine Nous, who, through persuasion, manages to form a single living, splendidly articulated Cosmos. Populated by men — the microCosmos.
Christ had not yet come during Plato's lifetime. It seems definite to me that, with the Incarnation and Sacrifice, Plato's "God Beyond the Cosmos" was drawn into the spheres of human history, of human knowledge, of human salvation.
With the Coming of Christ, God was no longer "Beyond" — He was Emmanuel — "God with us."
All thanks and glory be to God!
Thank you so very much for sharing your splendid observations, xzins, my dear brother in Christ!
Some people see the brain as a computer made of meat. I tend to see it as a wireless router made of meat. :)
I like those two metaphores..
but have my own.. The human body being a “space suit” for the “spirit” to wear while being tested on this planet..
sometimes the “suit” malfunctions (as all do eventually) but the spirit is eternal..
This answers questions no one can answer and frees from a world of faulty intellection.. d;-)~....
Cause I like FREEDOM.. http://vimeo.com/96879484
It is fascinating that they both arrived at the same three elements of thought. Memory is a pregnant part - because what is being accessed as memory may actually entail ethics, plans, principles and so on.
LOLOL! I would have used the term transmitter/receiver - but I’m old. Indeed, “Router” works very well for the metaphor.
Thank you for your insights, dear hosepipe!
Indeed! Yet each of these things is intangible, immaterial, non-phenomenal, and thus utterly beyond the reach of "instrumental reason" — the reason which knows "by a discursive process of moving from one thing to another," as Thomas Aquinas put it. This is the type of reason employed by the scientific method, which in its turn is based on direct observation and measurement.
But one cannot "directly observe" or "measure" things which are intangible, immaterial, non-phenomenal.... This species of causes can be seen only in their effects, which are observable, and thus can legitimately be classified as "phenomenal." [The philosophical Pragmatist William James in particular drew this distinction.]
Therefore, it seems to me that it is illegitimate to conclude that the sheer irreducibility of "ethics, plans, principles and so on" to the criteria of instrumental reason is proof of their non-existence. All this can tell me is that the scientific method is a tool that operates only within a limited domain of actual human experience.
All of which might strike one as so much wool-gathering. But where the "rubber really hits the road" is in the field of artificial intelligence studies. [Not to mention artificial life studies, which are ongoing.]
Folks engaged in the AI project believe they can fully implement the structures of human intelligence into a comprehensive model described ultimately in terms of mathematics. Such a model must faithfully mimic and reproduce all the elements of human thought in such a manner that any machine programmed with this information will become capable of autonomous reasoning ability.
Such a model was famously tried in the early part of the Twentieth Century — when David Hilbert's project of "reducing" mathematical language to its syntactical component only crashed and burned.
He, like Bertrand Russell, realized that human languages — especially the universal language of mathematics based in Number Theory — contained certain elements that seem to have an axiomatic character. That is to say, such items could not be separated into lesser parts, by which they in turn may be explained. Russell called these elements "impredicativities," and evidently detested them because they could not be analyzed into lesser parts that could be straightforwardly modeled in "digital" form — i.e., into simple "Yes/No," "True/False," "0/1" statements.
What Hilbert was trying to do, it seems, was to show that the semantical aspect of mathematical language could be fully captured and recapitulated in terms of the operations of syntax alone.
Hilbert's project utterly failed. And if there could be any doubt about that, along came the world-class mathematician Kurt Gödel — who articulated the Incompleteness Theorem — that finally dispositively laid the question to rest.
So it seems the AI guys must struggle to get around the limitations that impose themselves anytime one is trying to translate an "analog" situation into a "digital" one — or at least a "digitally-friendly" one. Centrally, their models must somehow accommodate the idea of a knowing self; but they have no valid conceptual way or means to do that if they insist on seeing language only in terms of syntax alone....
MEANING does not derive from syntax; syntax is just the "rules of the road" of any given language, especially including mathematics here. MEANING can only be conveyed in terms of semantics (or semiotics). To try to eradicate semantics from human language and discourse is to try to make the world of human experience and history absolutely senseless.
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your as ever astute observations!
Thanks for the ping to your excellent essay! ... Am contemplating posting in that regard, but the risks of ridicule cause hesitation. Some folks like to ridicule as their means to avoid thinking outside their boxes.
LOL! I hardly know what to make of a statement like that!
Are you saying that there is some faculty in "meat" that is capable of exchanging signals with/from "the Cloud" of "wireless" transmissions, and which can act in response to such signals???
If so, I think that is probably pretty likely....
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!
I am highly aware of that, dear brother in Christ.
On the other hand, I never let this consideration stop me from testifying to God's Truth, from bearing Witness to Him.
The Lord does not "live" in the same "boxes" that we do, being outside of space and time altogether.
Oh, I so hope you will write again on this subject!
And am looking forward to hearing from you again soon.
Never worry about "ridicule." It never matters in the end.
You may have had a stroke, my dear brother in Christ. But obviously, the "central Knower" of your existence — your "you" — could still discriminate between what was normal, and what abnormal, for you.
You mentioned that in communications with others, you had no problem communicating in writing. It was only in the speech department that you labored under a handicap, for a while.
I hope and pray that you have fully recovered from that debility — as seems very clearly to be the case.
You wrote that the "machine-part" of you was malfunctioning — but not your thoughts. How frustrating that must have been for you!
Your experience lends credence to my case: There is a "central Knower," a Self, or Soul, which, during our mortal existence, is "in charge" of our thoughts and actions. Normally, a physical body in good health is in good correspondence with this wholly extra-physical principle.
In poor health, this natural bond of the physical and spiritual might become compromised. What is striking to me is that the "central Knower" is actively aware of the discrepancy....
Your testimony definitely "adds value" to this discussion, my very dear friend, my brother in Christ!
with love and HUGS!!! — bb
The Lord does not “live” in the same “boxes” that we do, being outside of space and time altogether.
What a concept.... What IF we’re opened like a Christmas present (or something).. someday..
Taken out of our “box”... with time and space as new toys..
Could be something to look forward to.. EH!..
Each of the dimensions have variable expressions, and these variables knit together in ways we have yet to conceive of, simple because we do not have a grasp of what dimension Time is. As example, a photon crosses the universe always in the present time of its creation/emission. This thing called photon travels the Universe in a linear fashion, as the Universe exists as a volume, a volume of dimension Time and dimension Space ... and, in my calculus, dimension consciousness (the origin of life force), and dimension spirit.
ANYTHING that is alive has some aspect of dimension Consciousness. The consciousness of an amoeba is not nearly as complex as the consciousness of a Dolphin. The consciousness of an Angel is probably far superior to that of a Dolphin. These differences are phenomenological, complexity level differentiated. Whereas Peter nor James could move through solid rock so the stone was rolled away from the tomb, Jesus left the tomb without rolling away the stone, and He left with His physical body which had been mortally abused. The body which the women came to anoint was not going to prevent Jesus from 'being', and He took that body, refined in a way we cannot even imagine now and went in and out of rooms without using doors or windows, and appeared then disappeared on the road where He met with two of the believers leaving Jerusalem following the crucifixion of their Lord.
There are variable expressions of dimension Time which we have yet to fathom, mainly because we have not needed to comprehend the true nature of dimension Time. But the clues regarding Time are all over the Old and New Testament.
Indeed!! One of my reasons for low profile here of late is being newly mentally consumed with things like glycemic load, glucose testing & data plotting, etc., etc. associated with late-onset diabetes...
One of my favorite sayings is that
Humans are born with a terminal affliction called ..."life"...
'-)
Given time (of which I'm presently short) that concept deserves a large "essay post"...
Suffice it to say that we believers are far too prone to try to cram God into the "boxes" with which we are comfortable...
Man is not the measure of God.
(H/T: Alamo-Girl...)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.