Whiny Little Babies, the Continuing Story
Big, tough so-called milblogger runs crying to the Federal Election Committee because a newspaper ad killed his kitten. And he’s proud of it! Naturally he’s written against campaign finance reform, as anyone should, but principles are for suckers. Or grownups, maybe.
Comment by fnook —
September 13, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
Fight the power! God I wish I could hate the New York Times as much as the Blackfive bloggers.
Comment by washerdreyer —
September 14, 2007 @ 12:43 am
What the connection is between believing that the world would be more just if a particular law hadn’t been passed and a moral problem (or even a credibility problem) with making use of that law in the world where it exists is totally non-obvious to me.
What Jimbo is doing is, however, slimy for other reasons, namely his lack of relevant knowledge and reasonable expectation that such information will become available.
Comment by mds —
September 14, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
Um, I think we need to distinguish categories here. If one waves around First Amendment absolutism to denounce a law, one can certainly be criticized for hypocrisy if one uses said law in an attempt to suppress speech one dislikes. This is not at all the same as, e.g., disapproving of government highway funding on principle, but still using the interstate because it’s there anyway.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
September 14, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
Well put, mds.
Comment by washerdreyer —
September 14, 2007 @ 3:38 pm
Well put, but wrong. I claim the following is a morally unobjectionable, and plausibly existing, order of preferences:
1) The BCRA is never passed
2) The BCRA is repealed
3) The BCRA, having been passed and not repealed, doesn’t help any ideological group more than another
4) The BCRA helps the ideological group(s) I support more than ones I oppose
5) The BCRA helps the ideological groups I oppose more than the ones I support
Comment by mds —
September 14, 2007 @ 7:05 pm
Again, why is (1) at the top of that list? Because of invocation of a supposedly fundamental Constitutional principle. It is that “Zeroth Law” that is being discarded. Sure, one could say “This law is morally indefensible because it violates the Bill of Rights, but given that it exists, it should be applied in an evenhanded manner.” But one could also say “I am going to attempt to wield the law to violate what I supposedly believe are someone else’s constitutional rights.” This looks to be a case of the latter rather than the former. So even given the theoretical validity of the former, you would have a hard time convincing me that Uncle Jimbo approached this even remotely in the manner laid out in your comment.
(And even with the rational order of preferences, I’d still like to believe that it’s possible, and even desirable, to stand by one’s supposed fundamental principles about civil liberties even if one could gain an advantage by jettisoning them. But, well, we’re human.)