How are things on Wall Street

What Wall Street?

M. Nam

Manju: How are things on Wall Street

maybe, i should’ve went to law school.

But by and large, our version of freedom of speech, religion, press etc has worked far far better than anywhere else.

Ours is the only one which is absolute in its support for freedom of speech, whereas other constitutions make sacrifices.

Well, here’s another example of the conundrum. America is as close to an absolute conception of freedom of speech as we have in this world, with few exceptions for commercial speech, obscenity, etc..but even those are rarely enforced. But the principle works very clean when all the actors are private. Then you can say just about anything you want as long as you don’t interfere with the freedom of another (fire in a movie theatre, for example).

But what happens when govt funds speech, like say govt funded art. then the system breaks down, because with limited resources the government then is forced to privilege some speech (by funding it) over others (by refusing funding) Rules are set up to protect the spirit of the first amendment, like the government can’t viewpoint-discriminate (piss christ), but there is still o way to get around quality-discriminate (not funding bad art), though quality-banning would clearly be unconstitutional if applied to private actors (we will ban this blog because it sucks, for example).

so our constitution works on 2 levels, a theoretical plane that assumes only private actors while simultaneously allowing the government certain discretion to enter the private sphere…a discretion that breaks down the internal logic of the doctrine of the inalienable rights of man.

Manju, your right in that I’m advocating a society based on ideals rather than pragmatism. Yet, I think more than any other country in the world, this country was founded with the very idea that we should always strive towards reaching perfection. Just look at the equivalent of the Bill of Rights for any other modern democracy. Ours is the only one which is absolute in its support for freedom of speech, whereas other constitutions make sacrifices…’for the greater good of the country’….’except where it offends people’ etc.

I believe it is constitutionally fair to set an arbitrary secular standard such as ‘no headgear.’

Except that such standards are usually driven by a past religious history that implicitly favors one group rather than another. Why do you think people take off their headgear in the presence of authority in the west anyway? If that’s too obscure, how about schedules. The fact that people have to be paid overtime to work on Sunday is consistent, but hardly neutral w.r.t. religion. Our weekend comes from a Christian past.

so, your argument is that past norms defined in a mono-religious societal setting justify religion based guidelines in our current society?

Except that such standards are usually driven by a past religious history that implicitly favors one group rather than another. Why do you think people take off their headgear in the presence of authority in the west anyway?

If that’s too obscure, how about schedules. The fact that people have to be paid overtime to work on Sunday is consistent, but hardly neutral w.r.t. religion. Our weekend comes from a Christian past.

Manju, the idea of keeping religion on a ‘par’ with secular belief systems leads to such ideas as teaching Intelligent Design on a ‘par’ with evolution in schools.

Well, thats a good example of what I’m saying. When only private actors are involved, ID is on par with evolution, enjoying the same amount of protection. Private schools are allowed to teach either, both, one, or none. Under this paradigm under which the thoery of inalienable rights of man operates smoothly.

But when government is involved, as in public schools, we are faced with a conundrum. either we allow the schools to teach ID, thereby violating the separation of church and state, or we ban its teaching and thereby privilege on system of thought (science) over another (religion).

What I’m saying is that you can only maintain philosophical consistency within a pure libertarian system. otherwise, you have 2 bad choices.