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Ilsanman
Joined: 15 Aug 2003
Location: Bucheon, Korea
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 Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 6:01 am Post subject: yes |
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| well, wouldn't be such a bad argument. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 6:42 am Post subject: |
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"Characteristically, modern liberals aspire to base social order on equal rights and obligations of each individual with respect to society at large. The prime embodiment of involuntary duties to particular persons, the family, they would prefer to treat as a private sentimental or contractual arrangement among its members. They lack respect for the authority of tradition because they are uneasy with wisdom that can not be articulated and tested. Since they view satisfaction of actual preferences as the political good, they are reluctant to admit that preferences can be cultivated and that the cultivated few have a special role in government."
Good God, Napoleon, you and this guy are winning the argument for us. I'd like to thank you for providing the link to the best argument in favour of Western democracy, hedonism, empirical thinking and free cultural expression I have ever read.
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Well, I'm not sure that the cultivation of preferences by an elite is all that foreign a concept in the west right now. Doubtlessly, all of you are familiar with the following state-sponsored educational campaigns in your homelands:
anti-smoking
anti-racism
healthy eating
stay in school
monitor your chidren's television habits
be tolerant toward gays
etc etc etc
Now, do these campaigns spring from grassroots sentiment? Almost certainly not, otherwise there would be no need for them to exist in the first place. If everyone instinctively knew that racism and homophobia were wrong, and that chidren shouldn't spend five hours a day watching violent televison, the state wouldn't bother spending millions of dollars to tell people these things. So, the promulgation of elite opinion is pretty much a given in the indutrialized liberal west, whether we care to admit it or not.
My problem with the article is this: the writer presents a de-fanged version of Confucianism, which basically amounts to saying that we should admit the reality of preference cultivation by an elite. But, as I tried to show above, preference cultivation is already a fact of life in the west, with no help from Confucius(the writer even mentions that Edmund Burke said much of the same thing). So, what exactly does the guy think that Confucianism has to teach us? I think his real agenda is to use a feel-good, platitudinal version of Confucianism in order to sneak some decidely non-egalitarian "Asian values" in through the back door of North American political discourse. |
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dogbert
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210
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| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Interesting argument. I'd always figured that most people knew that drunk driving was wrong, yet we have seen both grass-roots movements against it as well as state-sponsored campaigns. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:04 am Post subject: |
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Interesting argument. I'd always figured that most people knew that drunk driving was wrong, yet we have seen both grass-roots movements against it as well as state-sponsored campaigns.
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Those campaigns got going when I was a child, in the late 70s. So they've pretty much always been part of the conventional wisdom for me. But, according to older people I've talked to, prior to the advent of those campaigns, getting behind the wheels of a car while a little bit tipsy was seen as no big deal by a lot of people.
Right now, there is a nascent campaign to restrict the driving of older people, on the grounds that their health makes them more likely to have accidents. If, in twenty years, this campaign has taken off and become the conventional wisdom, we may regard elderly drivers with the same horror that we currently regard drunk ones. And we'll wonder how anyone could ever have thought differently. |
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edoras
Joined: 26 Jan 2004
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:42 am Post subject: |
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This thread has the perfect title!  |
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