Catching up

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

Just got back in town after a week out, and had a fun time catching
up.

I agree with Kenton (!) about one post a day. What a good deal that
would be. Although I am a little concerned that a liberal wants to
work out this kind of a solution without the intervention of a regulatory
agency, I still support it, and after my comments below that's the last
you will hear from me today.

If our constitution, laws, and ordinances are all evolving, and there is
no over-arching ethical standard, then we have no basis for folks in one
part of the evolutionary process showing indignation at the inhabitants
of another portion of the process, regardless of what they are
doing at that other time. And if that is the case then we need to ditch
all our faux-indignation about Chinese folks having to live out of town,
women not voting, segregation of races, and women having to keep their
shirts on. Who cares?

If you are not relativists, then tell us what the standard is. Such a
standard would have to be better than your living elastic gumby
constitution, because a standard that can evolve into any other standard
isn't a standard at all. A constitution which could incrementally evolve
to the point where lynching blacks would be a civic responsibility and
duty is personally offensive to me, and I cannot believe that you all
persist in defending this. Why do you defend this?

But if you have a fixed standard, then please tell us what it is, and why
it is binding on the rest of us.

If you are open relativists, then open wide and swallow the
reductio. After all, it is your cooking, not ours.

And this ties in to my one comment on the misrepresentations of my
writing in Credenda. What I am represented as advocating, I
actually repudiate. But those who accuse me of this form of abusive
sexism have no basis for being indignant over any form of sexism.
So, suppose me guilty of maintaining that a wife should just lie back and
take it. So? Suppose that I do advocate spouse rape. Don't you?