Saturday, February 18, 2006

The Morality of Rational Self-interest.

Onkar Ghate at Capitalism Magazine has a fascinating article on what is rotten at the core of the West - the wrong definition for morality.

Love Thy Enemy: The Twilight of Freedom of Speech

I particular liked his summary below, but the whole article is great.

....

In the right's version [of morality], selfless surrender to evil translates into a foreign policy of self-effacing service.

Our duty, Bush declares, is to bring the vote to Iraqis and Palestinians, but we dare not tell them what constitution to adopt, or ban the killers they want to vote for. We have no right to assert our principles, because they are rational and good. But the Iraqis and Palestinians have a right to enact their tribal and terrorist beliefs at our expense, because their beliefs are irrational and evil. In the present crisis, the State Department will not defend free speech, because this principle is rationally defensible; to unequivocally assert this value would be selfish. But the Department will suggest that we respectfully refrain from publishing cartoons that upset the mental lethargy of self-made slaves to authority; Muslims have a right to their mystical taboos, precisely because the beliefs are mystical.

Tonight, when you turn on the news and see hatred-seething hordes burning the West's flags and torching its embassies, remember that this is the enemy your morality commands you to love and serve--and remember the lonely Danes hiding in fear for their lives.

And then, in the ultimate act of self-assertiveness, pledge to renounce the morality of sacrifice and learn its opposite: the morality of rational self-interest.

Though the West's twilight has begun, the darkness of suicide has not yet engulfed us. We still have a chance.

1 comment:

Cubed © said...

John,

The failure to understand just what a proper, valid moral code is speaks to the core of our inability to deal with Islam.

Most people do not recognize that a "moral code" is a set of values chosen to guide one's thoughts and actions, and that the operative term is "chosen."

Most people don't understand that while the operative term is "chosen," there actually IS an absolute "standard of the good" that a valid moral code is based on, and that moral codes based on anything else are invalid.

I won't burden you here with the derivation of "life as appropriate to the nature of a human being" as the absolute "standard of the good," but I'll be willing to bet that you know all about it anyway.

One of these days. . .