One of the great debates in the field of ethics centers around the thinking of Emmanuel Kant vs. the Utilitarians - most notably John Stuart Mill. To simplify, Kant’s philosophy suggests that the means justify the ends: we should always do the right thing and trust the results to work out for themselves. Mill, on the other hand, argued that we should do what produced the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, and that the ends justified the means.

I’ve always tried to do the right and moral thing, of course, but when push comes to shove I’ve been an unapologetic utilitarian. I might, in my brasher moments, have put it this way: what matters is the outcome, the result, and doing the noble thing when it leads to a tragic result isn’t ethical, it’s both immoral and stupid. Full Story »

Part two in a series.

As I suggested in Part One, the messianic/utopian view of science and technology attributed to LIFE Magazine is consistent with an ideological bent that traces its lineage to the dawn of the Enlightenment in Europe.

Francis Bacon’s highly influential New Atlantis, first published in 1626, recounts the narrator’s fictional shipwreck on the shores of Bensalem, a lost utopia, and offers one of the earliest testaments to the potential of applied science (Outhwaite & Bottomore 1994). In an extended ceremony, Bacon is given to know the seemingly limitless bounty of Bensalem’s scientific expertise. Bensalem is well versed in all manner of advanced technology: refrigeration and preservation, mining, agriculture, astronomy, meteorology, genetics, animal husbandry, desalination, medicine, musicology, mechanics, air flight, and mathematics are literally only a few of the society’s advanced technological arts. Full Story »

So by now you’ve probably heard that Ralph Nader is once again making a third run for the presidency. It pains me to have to say it, but Nader is making a terrible mistake and further tarnishing his legacy. He should not run.

Let me begin by emphasizing how much I admire Nader and all he has done. As a consumer advocate myself, I probably would not have the career I do if it wasn’t for him. His work on everything from auto safety to the corporate takeover of modern politics should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to stand up for the little guy. I read his book, supported his presidency, and when compared to the stiff mannequin that was Al Gore in 2000 and the incipient stupidity of Dubya, I pulled the lever for him.

But this isn’t 2000. It’s a very different world, and Nader simply refuses to recognize that.

Full Story »

(With apologies to Dr. Denny, whom I admire greatly, and who would certainly fix journalism if he could.)

Lost in the justified hand-wringing over the loss of newspaper jobs, and the inevitable reduction in the number of important stories journalists can uncover, is the issue of “quality.” I mourn the loss of quantity in the journalistic ranks as much as anyone, and I’m betting more than some, but I am more concerned with quality these days.

I happened to run across these two articles, here and here, by Alva James-Johnson, a columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Perhaps things have changed, but in my brief brush with newspapers many years ago, one did not become a columnist until one had demonstrated a depth of knowledge, insight, erudition, and quality of thought that qualified one for something near the top of one’s profession. Columnists were the cream of the crop. I hope, based on this example, that this is not the case these days. Full Story »

You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman - Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, friend of the poet.He is America’s poet….

He IS America - Ezra Pound

The greatest American poet is Walt Whitman. He is often referred to as the “poet of democracy” and as “the chronicler of the American character.” No other American poet matches him for breadth of vision about our country, nor for exploration of the political and social divisions of the United States. One may not always agree with his vision, but one never doubts the open mindedness and basic truth in it. Full Story »

Just as a quick hit, I’ve noticed a number of interesting pieces floating about the blogosphere that delve into the hidden dynamics and power struggles of the Clinton campaign and why it, originally as inevitable as the sunrise and paying taxes, is now foundering so badly.

The inestimable Pam Spaulding has a roundup of Michele Cottle (from The New Republican) and Josh Greene (from The Atlantic) looking into the resignation of Patti Solis Doyle, the role she played as power broker and manager, and how Clinton, like Bush, seems to prize loyalty and discipline over competence and effectiveness.

Last week, Obsidian Wings’ Hilzoy looked at coverage of the campaign and Clinton’s failures (including the Doyle resignation), and asked why the heck could Clinton have not foreseen this. Full Story »

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, first published in 1513, 176 pages, ISBN 978-0553212785

The worst that a prince may expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him;

In 1513, early into the Great Wars of Italy, an Italian politician, ambassador, soldier, and political philosopher was on the losing end of one of the many internal conflicts that followed the Reniassance. After being tortured and eventually released, he moved to his beloved Florence and settled down on a farm to write what is probably one of the most important treatises on politics written - Il Principe, The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. Full Story »

The Federal Reserve announced another $20 billion in funds auctioned off to commercial banks today in order to help prop them up in the wake of the global mortgage meltdown. Especially telling is why the auction is working so well when previous attempts to throw cash out of helicopters inject liquidity into the market haven’t worked so well:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues decided to try the new process because their efforts to inject funds into the banking system through the Fed’s discount window, which makes direct loans to banks, had proven less successful than Fed officials had hoped. Many banks had avoided using the Fed’s discount window out of concern that investors would see the move as an indication of underlying problems at their financial institutions. The auction process was developed as a second way to get money into the banking system with the hopes that it would not carry the stigma of the discount window. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, “This isn’t a bailout. Nothing to see here. Move along. Don’t mind the dead bull in the middle of the street.” Full Story »

The headline says it all…threatened with a filibuster and after eight hours of angry, eloquent debate on the vileness of supporting warrantless wiretapping and amnesty for lawbreaking telecom companies, Harry Reid has pulled the FISA reauthorization from the calendar for this Congressional session.

Make no mistake–this bill will be back next year. Protection for AT&T and Verizon is too high a priority for Bush, Mike McConnell, and the other enablers like Harry Reid. But the battlefield will be very different next time around. Next time the momentum will be on the side of Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, the ten Democratic Senators who voted against cloture, the many committed bloggers and activists who rallied the forces, and the thousands of committed Americans who wrote, sent e-mails, signed petitions, and made phone calls to stop this travesty of justice from becoming law. Full Story »

Today Chris Dodd is going to take the floor of the Senate chamber and not let go of it in order to prevent the passage of legislation that would not only reauthorize and extend the NSA surveillance program on millions of Americans, but would grant retroactive immunity from prosecution to the telecom companies that participated in this illegal program.

Thank You, Chris Dodd has more details about what this means and what you can do to help. I also recommend Scarecrow’s post at Firedoglake for some eloquent thoughts on why our system of government must be preserved. Russ Feingold has also pledged to stand with Dodd. Full Story »

Thx to Jim Gwyn for passing this on.

I’ve been critical of Obama’s wide stance recently, as I believe his attempts to be all things to all people have made it difficult to decipher what his governing philosophy will be. Obama’s done a lot to turn off the LGBT sector with his embrace of the homophobic pastor McClurkin, and his support for corporate welfare like the NAFTA Peru expansion has won him no friends in the populist set.

But yesterday Obama sharpened his attempt to secure support in the geek tech crowd with an ambitious proposal outlining his presidential technology policy. Full Story »

I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what Barack Obama is about lately. Like his infamous colleague Larry Craig,the Senator from Illinois seems to be taking a wide stance–but where Craig’s wide stance was bracketed by the infamous airport bathroom stall where he made his political mark (so to speak), Obama’s issue stances are so broad that both supporters and opponents alike are scratching their heads, wondering “What the hell does this guy stand for?”

Full Story »

There isn’t much I can add about Ron Paul’s fundraising success that hasn’t already been said before and better (particularly by Glenn Greenwald), except that this is an even clearer indication that there is a massive swath of the electorate that is so desperate for a candidate to speak plain truths and answer pleas for sanity that the fringes are suddenly looking mighty sane.

What Matt Stoller says here about the “crazy uncle theory” of politics is absolutely right–the more that so-called “mainstream” pols reject the public’s will and ignore their needs, the more they’ll gravitate to alternatives, no matter how long-shot and outlandish they may seem, to the point where (as John Aravosis notes) they start making much more sense.

But how crazy are people like Paul, Gravel, and Kucinich, really? Full Story »

“The hands-off approach hasn’t served consumers well. And the Web is far too important to entrust the free flow of information to the shifting whims of a few big companies. Government must step in and tell them to leave our content alone.”

Sounds like something you’d expect me to say, right? Or maybe Matt Stoller over at OpenLeft. But this memorable turn of phrase doesn’t belong to either of us, but to BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom, who wrote an editorial yesterday decrying the recent bad decisions of major telecom companies that decided they had the right to control the content their subscribers could access: Full Story »

Nearly everyone has their own favorite poems. Some are poems we were exposed to growing up, others are poems we were forced to study in high school or college English classes, and still others are poems that we discovered on our own. In my case, I discovered the first of the two following poems while growing up. I remember reading the first to my fellow 4th grade students and realizing just what it was I’d selected for that day’s reading as a girl burst into tears.

The second I discovered as I was reading through a book of poems by a poet whose other work I’d been forced to read and analyze in AP English class, and it struck me in much the same way as Machiavelli’s The Prince, Orwell’s 1984, Card’s Ender’s Game, and Dante’s Inferno had - like someone had reached over, smacked me upside the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick, and demanded that I pay attention.

So, without further ado, two of my favorite poems: Full Story »

Yesterday I came across a Daily KOS diary written by “Bonddad” (aka Hale Stewart), a prominent economics blogger and writer who also has his own blog space. Hale’s a very smart man who’s forgotten more about the markets than I’ll ever know, and I had the pleasure of getting his expertise for a story I wrote a few years back on the declining fortunes of the middle class. So when he speaks, I generally give it a listen. Full Story »

Richard Rorty is dead at age 75. He was more than a philosopher; he was a social thinker. In this era of dysfunctional, amoral government, he left Americans a legacy of hope by reminding us of the intellectual foundations of our political morality and practical accomplishments. Rorty wrote, in his 1999 book Philosophy and Social Hope, of his “hopes for a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society,” and many of his later essays explored the ideas on which such a society could be built.

Hope is what we chiefly need in the era of George Bush, Osama bin Laden, and their fellow fearmongers. We need leaders who encourage us to broaden the circle of friendship and kinship beyond the usual boundaries, who sensitize us to the suffering of fellow human beings and help us to identify with them—and therefore to reduce the tensions that lead to violence and war. Rorty suggests that this is the best path to take not because it is admirable or moral in some universal sense, but because it is practical; if we have defined our desired goal as a peaceful, egalitarian society, such expanded sympathy is simply the most likely path to achieve that goal.

Full Story »