Freedom Four

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. LTE RE: "Donald Trump, Pagan King", by Peter Schwartz (New York Times):

Leighton Woodhouse maintains that Judeo-Christian ethics are "the basis for the American Declaration of Independence." But the opposite is true.

180 words/1 minute

2. "Rights Are Just 'Words on a Page' if Federal Agents Can Ignore Them," by Agustina Vergara Cid (The Orange County Register):

"I'm a [U.S.] citizen, I'm just trying to get to work," [George Retes] said. [Attorney Marie] Miller says George even told the agents where his ID was inside the car. "No one seemed interested," she stated. "They didn't seem to disbelieve him. They just seemed to not care."

This seeming indifference from federal agents regarding the questionable legality of their purported actions -- not to mention their brutality -- should alarm every American.

900 words/3 minutes

3. "ICE Tyranny Is What Democracy Looks Like," by Benjamin Bayer (The Orange County Register):

"Remember: the Athenian democracy voted to put Socrates to death." -- Ben Bayer (Image via via Wikipedia, public domain.)

... The Founders gave us not a democracy, but a constitutional republic, a system premised on limiting government's function solely to protecting the individual's rights.

The laws Trump is enforcing are not "undemocratic." But they do violate constitutional rights. Even non-citizens have a right to liberty. Laws restricting immigrant labor violate the freedom to work and engage in trade. But these are freedoms Democrats long ago sold down the river when they sought ever-increasing regulations on the freedom of businessmen.

If Trump's ICE now assaults procedural rights like due process, it's because he like so many other Presidents have habituated action by executive order...

950 words/3 minutes

4. "'Man's Life' as the Standard of Value in the Ethics of Aristotle and Ayn Rand," by Gregory Salmieri (Book Chapter from Two Philosophers: Aristotle and Ayn Rand, edited by James G. Lennox and Gregory Salmieri):

In the first two sections of this [chapter], I elucidate the content of the human form of life as understood by Aristotle and Rand, respectively. In my third section, I show how the differences in their view of Man's Life reflect (and contribute to) different views of how a form of life can serve as an ethical standard. These differences, in turn, have implications for the extent to which their respective moral philosophies provide objective guidance rooted in knowledge of human nature, rather than merely systematizing existing mores or reading them into human nature. Accordingly, I close with a discussion of the objectivity of what each thinker regards as moral knowledge.

13,600 words/45 minutes

-- CAV