"I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave." - E. M. Forster

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Xephyris: My Firefox does not take noticeably longer to startup. Extensions are not the same as plugins. They work with FF code, and do not necessarily add bulk to it.

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Ben Stiller should star in every movie - "Better yet, why not create a movie where Stiller stars in every role? It could be like "Multiplicity," except good. They could call it: along came something about royal focker's envy for the dodgeballs of mystery men. It would be the best movie ever. It would start out with Ben Stiller trying to revive some obscure children's ball game in order to impress his highschool sweetheart, only to learn that she has psychotic ex-CIA parents who hit it big when they discover a formula that makes shitty movies disappear."

***

Lisheng, Young Republic's resident conservative intellectual, speaks, and is demolished by a chorus of incensed liberals:


Lisheng: All hail the community of the angry frustrated liberal youths, who occasionally let their anger spill out into hot-blooded vulgarities and
fulminations against the evil Other, aka the government, moral minority,
NUS law professors, religious right-wing nut-jobs etc. I am sure that this
category of people represent the future in all its glorious inevitability,
and carry in their persons the salvation of our Republic, as embodied in
their progressive and trendy views. Dictators around the world can rejoice
in the knowledge that our youths are supporting you, unless you happen to
be ruling in Singapore which means that you, by a cruel twist of fate, have
become a part of the Other, incapable of doing right and deserving of our
youths' moralistic and priggish condemnation.

Also, for all those who are too poor to buy your own condoms (or too lazy),
rejoice for "safe sex" is close at hand. If our youths get their way, as
they inevitably will, free condoms will soon be available at every Geylang
street corner, Hotel 81 reception desk and China Air/Thai Air flight (to be
distributed to incoming "foreign talent" and outgoing "local talent").
Never mind that subsequently the quality of your personal enjoyment during
the process will be somewhat reduced - after all you don't want to be
getting a terrible disease that you don't deserve now, do you? Very good.
Now you have been educated, and therefore the world will be saved from
AIDS. Another good deed done by the nice people - all in a day's work.

Cheers, Lisheng PS There is an absolutely safe way to avoid AIDS, and it's
eminently practical: limit yourself to sex with one partner. But then
again, if I were to educate people accordingly, I'd be accused of being
illiberal, right-wing and totalitarian, taking away the fundamental freedom
to spread your genes around (after all, the animals do it, so it must be
natural). So I suppose we must go with the free distribution of condoms as
the more "practical" policy. Never mind that the birth rate is falling =P


Caleb: And now to address Lisheng's attempt at irony:

You seem to enjoy setting up a caricature of 'liberals' so that you can mow
it down. That isn't very intellectually honest at all.

Most liberals -- unlike the ones dreamt of Edmund Burke and friends -- do
not think that by educating ppl all problems will miraculously disappear.
BUT surely it is right that education helps ppl understand their world
better and to make more rational decisions which will benefit both them and
the ppl around them. If ppl knew that condoms will protect them against
AIDS, and they had a rational understanding of the kinds of risks they are
taking by not wearing condoms, then there is likely to be an increase in the
use of condoms in the sexually active population at large. Of course there
is no guarantee that it will happen, just that it is likely.

And more importantly, what I am advocating is a govt policy which
concentrates on getting ppl to practice safe sex, I am not saying 'ok ppl,
pls go out there and enjoy your god-given right to fuck around -- just don't
forget your condoms!! Don't leave home without them ppl!!'. Really you have
misrepresented my views in the most inaccurate way.

UNAIDS, as well as countless other NGOs, have produced evidence showing that
countries which have used an 'abstinence-only' policy have been far less
successful than countries which use a safe-sex policy. This is a
well-documented fact. It has nothing to do with promoting promiscuity. It
has everything to do with saving lives.

UNAIDS has shown that women in Africa are now a high-risk group. This is not
because women in Africa are particularly promiscuous. It is because their
husbands are, and they have to suffer conjugal sex without condoms and
therefore get infected. Their husbands are able to use societal pressure to
prevent the use of the condoms in the conjugal bed -- and this is partly to
due with ppl like Lisheng and John Paul II who continue to see the use of
contraceptives as morally wrong and leading to promiscuity. Well promiscuity
is better than death isn't it -- oh but wait for some ppl this is not true :
'I would rather die than to offend thee my Lord because thou art all good
and deserving of all my love' says the Act of Contrition.

Oh and btw, I do not love leaders of poor countries who abuse their
populations while attacking capricious and unaccountable govt here. Have I
said here in any context 'oh that wonderful Lenin, first fruit of our
socialist society'? Or 'all hail Robert Mugabe, avenger of the black man
against the evil colonialists!' Or anything of that sort? Well... no. So pls
don't fabricate a view for me. I have quite enough of my own as you can see.

And finally, since you bear so much dislike for liberals, perhaps you would
prefer to see a return to a world where the slave trade still exists, where
torture is routinely used by both Church and State, where most ppl do not
have a say in how their lives are run, where workers earn subsistence pay
and work 15 hrs a day, where one can be imprisoned indefinitely without
charge (oh wait that still happens in a certain island in the sunny
tropics...)

Because of reforms made by liberals, life expectancy has almost doubled in
the last 150 years, and there is mass education, mass political
participation and security for common ppl under the law. But of course,
these gains are not the important ones at all. Better that ppl pray, and
have only one sexual partner -- as in one *public* sexual partner of course,
and learn to be content with this best of all possible conservative
Christian worlds.


Lisheng: Oh dear, I seem to have made myself misunderstood again! It wasn't all irony. "Attempt" is a good word, Caleb =)

I suppose that when the "liberals" want to get down to practical policy
making, I am quite happy to sit down with them, and to stop AIDS I don't
think more condoms or even free condoms is a bad or ridiculous policy at
all. So I was at least 50% serious when I said that our liberal youths are
doing a whole lot of good. Serious. Oh yes, I am personally very much in
favour of condoms indeed, and I am not in favour of the Pope, so perhaps I
too have some grounds for complaint about being stereotyped!

As for sex education, I do see the need for changes, although I think that
RI wasn't that bad - I still remember about things like IUDs and such for
example. The point, of course, is that the high risk group is not going to
RI, and in all likelihood may be out of school by now. So what do we do?
The usual - TV ads, bus stop posters, instructions on use inside condom
packs, NTUC promotions on condoms. I have no problems with all the above.

I suspect that the high risk group, however, is getting their "education"
from another altogether unhelpful alternative source (or sources) of
information. By which I mean wholly unrealistic fiction that never mentions
condoms when it gets to narrating sex scenes (plenty of them on offer in
our national libraries), and more pertinently, porn sites which (I believe
- someone please confirm) hardly ever figure condoms in their pictures or
erotic stories. I have also read studies of NS youths in which interviewees
complained that using condoms was 'no shiok' and therefore preferred coitus
interruptus. So perhaps that is where a big part of the "unaddressed
problem" lies. As I said, I was half serious.

In other words, Education is only one part of the issue, the other has to
do with human choice. Here the liberal faces his classic dilemma: man and
woman (or man and man) want to engage in unprotected sex (despite knowing
the risks) because it is more shiok. It is a perfectly rational decision
because utility is a metaphysical concept of impregnable circularity, to
quote Joan Robinson. Yet by exercising their "freedom of choice" in
promiscuous and consensual fashion, they contribute to the spread of AIDS
and harm others. What do we do, leave them to the consequences of their own
choices (which gets some people really upset because they are choosing
something bad that they do not deserve...) or intervene from on high on the
assumption that their meta-preference is that they do not want to get AIDS?
You make the choice, since you're the "liberals".

Me, I say simple: you really want to stop the problem that you claim is so
serious, let's do it in utilitarian fashion with CBAs and all that jazz.
Start with a compulsory yearly blood test (or however often you want,
depending on the seriousness of the problem), identify all the problem
cases and offer treatment. Do the same for people coming into the country,
and make it an offence for them to engage in intercourse until the results
come out (it takes only 3-4 days, surely you can abstain that long). Tada,
problem solved. Then whoever wants to have sex with person A can ask
him/her for proof of AIDS status. If you don't want to ask or want to go
ahead with a positive status, it's at your own risk, but we will still
offer treatment thereafter. It's expensive, yes, but eventually the AIDS
problem will become even more expensive. If the AIDS problem becomes too
expensive, we can turn to more drastic measures like making everyone carry
their AIDS status on their ICs, or laser-tattoing it on their necks, or as
a last resort criminalising sexual intercourse for infected persons. That's
the amoral, utilitarian approach for you.

Coming back to "education", perhaps the government should use its media
muscle to "influence" the content of pop culture magazines like 8 days or i
zhou kan (as well as more "yellow" publications) to promote condom use.
That's a positive use of censorship for you! Although historically I should
point out that a strong anti-yellow culture and anti-vice stance was a
foundational part of our struggle for independence (these unsavoury
lifestyles being associated with the decadent colonial masters, of course).
No kidding.

Now about intellectual honesty: firstly I do not think that Singapore is
quite the same as Africa. I also think we should legislate against marital
rape, so I guess that makes me a liberal *wink*. As for the reference to
dictators, I was referring to people who are dead set against intervention
in Iraq. I would like to know how they would have not intervened at all,
thereby indirectly supporting a dictator, or intervened in a "nicer" way.
Until then the "ostrich approach" to international relations (aka
isolationism) is, as far as I can see, supporting dictators.

If you wanted to be utilitarian and invoke raison d'etat, then yes I agree,
in the final analysis states intervene not because of ideals but because of
national interests. We can argue about what constitutes a state's "proper
interests" although I suspect that eventually the Joan Robinson quote will
come into play again, this time albeit on a larger scale (since
international law treats states like persons). Ultimately it's hard to
moralise from this perspective - states take action because the power
holders have made the calculations and come to the conclusion that they
stand to gain. There's little point in carping from the sidelines about
past actions - all you can do is to hope to influence their present
calculations about future ones, and hecne their present and future actions.
That is, if you think you're better at calculating than the power holders,
which may or may not be true.

My final point is this, without any irony intended: it is futile for the
liberals to moralize from a materialistic worldview. The best you can
settle for is the amoral utilitarian approach. If you want morals and
"true" liberalism, you need God - and that is why it is the Christians who
have led and won the battles of history against torture, slavery,
commodification of women etc. Anything else is mere opium for the masses.

Cheers,
Lisheng

PS you would also find that Christianity places the emphasis not on the
transformation of the institutions, but of the individuals. Good
institutions can only at best constrain bad individuals, who will be
constantly finding loopholes... in contrast good individuals will put in
place good institutions and live harmoniously under them. So I think
Christianity has got the emphasis right. =) Not to mention the many
problems that simply cannot be solved institutionally...


Someone: > I suspect that the high risk group, however, is getting their "education"
> from another altogether unhelpful alternative source (or sources) of
> information. By which I mean wholly unrealistic fiction that never mentions
> condoms when it gets to narrating sex scenes (plenty of them on offer in
> our national libraries), and more pertinently, porn sites which (I believe
> - someone please confirm) hardly ever figure condoms in their pictures or
> erotic stories.

I'm sorry but once again you are wrong. The 'high-risk group', by which I take
to mean the homosexual community, is always quick to point out the limitation of fiction. Erotic literature is frequently preceded by a warning with regard to the use of protection; pornography tends to portray safe sex. Barebacking is very out in the
international gay scene. No really. As I've pointed out many times before: the 'high-risk group' knows it is at risk and does all it can to minimise it.

And frankly I found your flippant dismissal of sex in your previous post
(something along the lines of 'after all animals are doing it so it must be right!') most unamusing, although I'm fairly sure it was supposed to be funny. Firstly there is the issue of the misrepresentation of animals, some of which, like the elephant (which Aristotle and random Catholic saints points out as a paragon of marital virtue), tend to be monogamous their whole lives, if they can help it. But that was a farcical point. Then there is the issue of denying sex its power over human beings. One may of course deny the 'base' instincts. But I would suggest a thorough reading of Shakespeare's M4M: 'it is impossible to extirp it quite till eating and drinking be put down.' Thirdly there is the implication that there is something bad about promiscuous sex -- which may be justified but in this case was merely a rather feeble attempt at hyperbolic phrasing.



> Me, I say simple: you really want to stop the problem that you claim is so
> serious, let's do it in utilitarian fashion with CBAs and all that jazz.
> Start with a compulsory yearly blood test (or however often you want,
> depending on the seriousness of the problem), identify all the problem
> cases and offer treatment. Do the same for people coming into the country,
> and make it an offence for them to engage in intercourse until the results
> come out (it takes only 3-4 days, surely you can abstain that long). Tada,
> problem solved. Then whoever wants to have sex with person A can ask
> him/her for proof of AIDS status. If you don't want to ask or want to go
> ahead with a positive status, it's at your own risk, but we will still
> offer treatment thereafter. It's expensive, yes, but eventually the AIDS
> problem will become even more expensive. If the AIDS problem becomes too
> expensive, we can turn to more drastic measures like making everyone carry
> their AIDS status on their ICs, or laser-tattoing it on their necks, or as
> a last resort criminalising sexual intercourse for infected persons. That's
> the amoral, utilitarian approach for you.

You say simple, I say simple. In fact, let's take your suggestion to its logical
extreme. We round up everyone everywhere with AIDS or who is HIV+ and gas them to death! This way we can be rid of them even before the disease comes to claim them.

I don't even see how this fits into the benthamist-utilitarian model. What
happens to the happiness of those who have to undergo such social, legal and political ostracism? Do we disregard them because they are subhuman?

And whatever happened to finding a cure for AIDS. Wouldn't a more sensible
'amoral, utilitarian approach' involve trying to seek the key to recovery?

There's little point in carping from the sidelines about
> past actions - all you can do is to hope to influence their present
> calculations about future ones, and hecne their present and future actions.

Oh there is a point alright, and that's why people study history. And politics.
And international relations. And etc. Which are disciplines which involve 'carp[ing]
on the sidelines about past actions.' If one does not look to the past then how does
one perform 'calculations' for the future.


> My final point is this, without any irony intended: it is futile for the
> liberals to moralize from a materialistic worldview. The best you can
> settle for is the amoral utilitarian approach. If you want morals and
> "true" liberalism, you need God - and that is why it is the Christians who
> have led and won the battles of history against torture, slavery,
> commodification of women etc. Anything else is mere opium for the masses.

Why is the best that liberalism can settle for the 'amoral, utilitarian
approach'?

More importantly, why does 'true' liberalism require God, and the Christian God
at that? This sounded incredibly patronising, complacent and offensive, and is intensely ironic. Your thrasonical claim, full of surety, that 'anything else is mere opium for the masses', suggests that you aren't exactly very open to differences in opinion, and at any rate you have the backing of the one true God and are going to heaven so it doesn't really matter.

Plus the fact that you claim that it is the Christians who have 'led and won the
battles against torture, slavery, commodification of women etc'. Which blatantly ignores the fact that the Church has much blood on its hands. The inquistion (oh, Christians certainly behaved very Christianly, with their use of torture!) comes to mind, as does the excesses of pre-revolution France, as does the imprisonment of Galileo et al, as does the denigration of women (a la Pauline epistles), as does the tacit cooperation of the Church with Italian and German fascism, as does etc etc. And by the way -- it is far, far, far too simplistic to assume that the ending (partial ending) of torture, slavery and commodification of women was due to Christians acting on Christian belief. Please.

> PS you would also find that Christianity places the emphasis not on the
> transformation of the institutions, but of the individuals. Good
> institutions can only at best constrain bad individuals, who will be
> constantly finding loopholes... in contrast good individuals will put in
> place good institutions and live harmoniously under them. So I think
> Christianity has got the emphasis right. =) Not to mention the many
> problems that simply cannot be solved institutionally...

So does rousseauism, which isn't in essence very christian. And certain taoist
beliefs, which aren't very Christian either.

Your ending paragraphs, which you so claim are without irony, are bursting with
it.


Caleb: >My final point is this, without any irony intended: it is futile for the
>liberals to moralize from a materialistic worldview. The best you can
>settle for is the amoral utilitarian approach. If you want morals and
>"true" liberalism, you need God - and that is why it is the Christians who
>have led and won the battles of history against torture, slavery,
>commodification of women etc. Anything else is mere opium for the masses.

Torture: now disavowed by the church, but the historical record is clear.
First steps to abolishing torture arose from efforts of the Enlightenment
philosophes, e.g. Voltaire, who condemned the grisly torture and execution
of the Chevalier de la Barre. The chevalier had been sentenced to having his
tongue cut out and having his body mutilated for having committed some
adolescent acts of sacrilege on a crucifix by an ecclesiastical court.

Of course, torture was abolished in France by the Constituent Assembly in
the Constitution of 1791 -- and it was a very liberal, not a very Christian
assembly.

Slave trade: Yes Christian humanitarian groups were instrumental in
pressuring govts to take steps to end the trade. But these groups were both
Christian and Liberal (with a capital L and with a small l). As you will
remember, the non-conformist ethic was very much associated with the Liberal
party (against the C of E tories).

Feminism: Yes feminism has its ultimate origins in the Christian valuation
of the infinite (and therefore equal) worth of each human being. This much I
agree with -- I did say after all that I was a Christian humanist. BUT by
this measure then democracy and individualism are also 'Christian',
something which would muck up most of the underlying assumptions of your
general scheme. The tensions in the C of E over the appt of female bishops,
the absolute refusal of the current Pope to consider the ordination of women
(despite the fact that most respectable Catholic theologians -- except of
course Cardinal RATzinger) and the current fashion in independent S'pore
churches to insert 'and to submit [to you my dear husband] in the Lord' to
the bride's wedding vows suggest that Christianity has been as much
responsible for the subjugation as the liberation of women.

And now that I've warmed up, lets talk philo anyway:

It is true that a law conception of morality is impossible without a
lawgiver (usually God). Also as I have mentioned before I would think a
deontological conception of ethics commits one to at least deism. So yes in
a sense an atheistic worldview would lead to a consequentialist ethic. But
this *is* an ethic; utilitarianism is an ethical system which is fairly
robust -- ethicists like Peter Singer still work within a utilitarian
system, though of course Singer advocates killing infants who are severely
retarded, so...

Furthermore, one can conceive of a value theory of ethics without being
either a consequentialist or a deontologist. One would then be a teleologist
(if such a word exists). Therefore one can say that certain things are
'virtuous' depending on what a man/woman is meant to be within his/her
society, a la Aristotle.

yup.


Someone else: The other befuddling thing is your view on pornography. This would probably reflect badly on me but:

a) I have never seen this warning to use protection at the beginning
of any form of erotic literature that I've seen and;

b) I really CANNOT imagine a porn film where the film star says, "Eh,
hang on ah, before I screw you in the locker room I put on my condom
first, okay?" Or the rape "victim" going, "Ahh ahhh don't rape me...
but if you do, use a condom!" Or the cow going, "Moooooo use
condoommmooooooo".

The porn industry goes to relatively great lengths to ensure that
their actors are HIV negative so that this sort of semi-farcical
situation doesn't occur on screen, although their checks are not as
air-tight as one would like (there was a scandal some time back where
a porn actress contracted a disease - possibly AIDS but i can't
remember - on the set.)


Me: Ah yes. Our resident conservative intellectual. You should really go
talk to Ann Coulter. Both of you would be writhing in ecstasy as you
slandered, defamed and misrepresented liberals. Though to be fair, at
least you're cheerier about it than her :)


Worthier minds than mine have already aptly demolished your divers
delusions. Suffice to say that liberals have always been at the
vanguard of the movement to advance Man as a progressive being, while
conservatives have always tried to hold us back by appealing to
tradition, morals, religion and fear of the unknown.


"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The
radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative
adopts them." - Mark Twain

"I never dared to be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old."
- Robert Frost

Just imagine: A century ago you would have been one of the liberals
that you seem to despise so! How awful. (And even more awful is the
thought that in a century I would be considered a conservative. Ah
well. C'est la vie)


The very same arguments that conservatives are using in the present to
legislate for such worthy causes as banning gay marriage have been
used in the past to suppress the heliocentric world view, support
slavery, deny women the vote and elevate some races above others.

I must admit that the cries of utilitarianism do not strike people on
a visceral level, but more on a logical level. Nonetheless, if it is
not good to make as many people happy as is possible (generally
speaking - let's not quibble about specifics yet), the concept of
goodness itself would be questionable, in which case there would be no
point arguing about morality and immorality. If you subscribe to a
world view that dictates that being miserable (a bad) is good, then
one could question whether it would be good to try to be good. If
feeling bad is good, then being good might be bad, and being bad might
be good. I shall attempt to make this argument more cogent in future.

One is much more easily filled with a sense of divine righteousness
and morality when one is told what to do by voices in their heads, or
vague feelings and pricklings that they might have, but the problem is
that everyone hears different voices in their heads; Christianity
transforms people in different ways. You have such shining examples as
Jack Chick, Jerry Falwell and all the fundies in the good ole USA
whose faith has transformed them radically into paragons of virtue.


Just a point about Christianity and women: Though Christianity is not
quite as mean to women as some cultures/religions, it is still a
century or so behind our current secular humanist consensus about
gender equality.

I recall that the Catholic Church still does not ordain female
priests, and the other big group of Christianity, the American strain
of fundamentalism, adheres to a literalist interpretation to support
putting women down - some fundies get the misogynistic part of
Ephesians recited at marriages, for example, and I vaguely recall
others using Timothy to justify women's diminished place as well. And
this is not a recent phenomenon either. Through history, woman has
been blamed for original sin, etc.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html


And now I depart to shoot Silly String at people by the pool.