rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (11/28/84)
> At some point in the entertainment it dawned on me that > some people actually believe that "tolerance" is valid as a universal > principle -- a sort of supreme, irrefutable dogma suitable as a basis > for public policy positions. The discussion then changed so as to > explore this concept more fully. Unfortunately we have had to proceed > at the level of the slower students (after all, these people are actually > allowed to vote!) at the expense of those who raise valid points (I am > thinking of Steve Bellovin and, very occasionally, Rich Rosen). If the > slower students can admit that they are guided by learned value orientation > and not Reason or Logic, then we can proceed to more interesting questions, > such as, what values are appropriate for public policy decisions? [BRUNSON] (Again, this was copied, not from Brunson's original article, but from the extract in Andy Banta's article. If someone would please mail a copy of the original article to this poor soul who lives where UNIX system support is an oxymoron and UUCP connections are a low priority... [flame off, for now]) Ah, this is what Brunson has meant by his oft-repeated phrase "Lou-Grant-isms". Us "slower students" are guided by "learned value orientation", as learned in bastions of liberal thought like the Lou Grant show!! I take it Mr. Brunson believes that HIS line of thought (and I use the word in its loosest sense :-) is free from such "learned value orientation". Why? Because he learned it in the BIBLE, the bastion of absolute truth. Why, it's not "learned value orientation" if you say it's straight from the mouth of god, is it? And it clearly really *is* straight from the mouth of god just because you've been trained (through "learned value orientation", perhaps?) to believe that that's the way it is!!! Right? So much for another Brunson non-argument. Why should tolerance be a universal guiding principle, from a purely logical perspective? (DuBois and other Bible readers have "come out of the closet" to admit that they really don't think the Bible has anything to say about tolerance!) Since Brunson has stated that I have actually impressed him with what he has called "valid points" (I wish I could say that the reverse were true), I'll reiterate some of them. If the purpose of society is to take care of its individuals (not necessarily "care" for them, but accommodate their needs as human beings while agreeing to a commitment to the maintenance of the society on the part of each individual), then can a society arbitrarily say which people can and cannot receive the benefits of that society? Societies *can* do this and *have* done this! But what comes of denigrating/belittling/ abusing classes of people for the benefit of others? It foments rebellion, it damages the society as a whole (why SHOULD the abused people work to benefit a society that they gain nothing from?), it creates an unmanageable society. (All this aside from the perhaps arbitrary moral argument that it's wrong to abuse other people.) Now, by avowing as a society to ensure the rights of all, those who have been the abusers lose "rights" (if abuse-related privileges can be called "rights"). This gets into a separate but very important issue which we've all skirted: how does one RATIONALLY change morality from an irrational, possibly "evil" morality (e.g., fundamentalist Judaeo-Christian doctrine) to a perhaps more rational and less abusive (of people) type of morality, in an orderly fashion (i.e, without causing the reactionary tide that has apparently swept this country once some people realize that granting rights to others means taking "rights" (abuses) away from them)? Brunson has skirted the issue by just assuming "well, such a change would affect me negatively, causing me to have to re-evaluate my thinking in order to live in a society, therefore let's not do it!" While others among us have simply ignored the issue. -- "Come with me now to that secret place where the eyes of man have never set foot." Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr