General Grumps (USAF, ret.)

I look forward to seeing those novice faces looking up at me tonight with uncorrupted innocence in their eyes. Not one of them will ask me if there can ever be such a thing as a just government. And they will go home to sleep the sleep of, well, the just, as a result.

When last I visited the Legion of Doom I did put up a post on the whiteness of the whale the justness of government. Someone had contended not simply that this would be run on Sept-Oct, but that it was reasonable to run it. I haven’t gone back yet to see the responses to my post; I keep my visits down to a one-a-week maximum, since I seem to be roughly 90% of the Legion’s posting population; even I don’t find my opinions all that interesting. Still, the idea that a government cannot be held up to some sort of test of whether or not its actions are just strikes me as a rather bizarre position for anyone to espouse. Even if I don’t approach it from a logical perspective, and I assure you I could, and did, I have to wonder how many, or how few, years one needs to live on the planet to reach a point where one believes that governments are above or beneath justice. Or aside from justice. Are the USA’s actions regarding Guantanamo just? That would be arguable, on either side. But to say that justice is inapplicable? At that point, I would probably have little or no interest in discussing the matter with you any further. Perhaps instead we could discuss the number of angels dancing on the head of this pin I just happen to have with me.

If LD becomes jejune sophistry (is that redundant?), it will bore me to tears. Historically the angel-counters were of the highest intellectual ability, but they were still angel-counters in the long run, so saying that this is “high level” debate because its practitioners are really smart is like saying [fill in your own metaphor for the source of some thing being irrelevant to its quality].

For that matter, there’s the debate debate. The debate debate is a case with 75% setup of standards and a brief run past some argument that may lightly contend a position regarding the resolution, if one can even remember the resolution at this point. And then of course you win because all you have to do is uphold the fourth tine of your criterion fork. Jeesh! If I wish to train my new parent judges that one ought to be able to make an ethical choice based on what one just heard in the round, that an inclination to take action for one side or the other is a good way to gut-adjudicate a round (which is what parents mostly do, starting out), I can imagine what ethical decision they’ll make when it all boils down to not what the decision is but the nature of the decision-making process. I refuse to use the word hermeneutics in newbie judge training. Or upperclassman judge training (which I have to do in a couple of weeks). Or any other judge training. First of all, it sounds to me like a naked Munster, and, second, I think if you look up hermeneutics in the dictionary, it has a picture of jejune sophistry to illustrate it.

Anyhow, tonight the newbies will be browbeaten about various and sundry, including signups on the listserver, at which they remain steadfastly lax. Then I introduce them to V/C. (Yeah, yeah, I can hear you murmuring that I’m ruining another bunch.) Then a dose of elementary logic, vis-à-vis the rez. Then the tutti of my fruttis will join us for a deeper look at some logical fallacies. I’ve never really dwelt on logic much in the past, because I think for the most part the level of logic we employ remains at the instinctive. But for some people, logic isn’t an instinct, so this should be fun.

(And, curiously enough, no one has yet noticed the Easter Egg on the Bump invite. Why do I bother? And Policy is almost sold out already. Unbelievable.)