Karole Drones, Dick Plays Find The Lady

After last week's flurry of activity, things have gone a bit quiet here at casa FI Fie. Feeling a little bored this evening, I decided to mosey on over to Karole the fallibilist to see what sort of thing he's been blogging about and, hopefully, laugh at it. Unfortunately I couldn't even get started due to the sheer dullness of the posts. The titles are bad enough: "The Fallacy Of Asymetric Idealisation" anyone? But the real horror begins when you venture into the main text. I've tried and tried to read the stuff, but my eyes just scan over the words, refusing to take in whatever meaning they may or may not contain. Here, have a go yourself:

"Power and secrecy must characterise intelligence agencies, in order for them to be effective. The more of each, the better. This, of course, is provided such power is used only as it ought. Secrecy necessarily prohibits public accountability providing a check on intelligence agenciesZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........., Sorry, no you lost me there. Maybe if I ram needles under my fingernails while I read:

Instead preventing misuse of power is carried out by government oversight. The degree and process of oversight must be a function of the nature (and development) of the threats on which intelligence is sought. The key question in the U.S. debateZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz...........Nope, nodded off again.

Karole Cuddihy may well be one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Alas, we will never know.

Speaking of crystalline prose, I note that Richard Waghorne has been attempting to ape the Christopher Hitchens style of late:

"I will pour myself a quiet, unhappy glass of red wine the evening of the day he is executed, consoled that justice has been done and speechless at the man's evil."

Not bad Dick, not bad, although I think Hitch is more of a Martini man. The "unhappy" is the key word here, capturing the tired melancholy of a man who's been around long enough to know that sometimes you've just got to kill a few people (moral clarity and what not). The piss-up, chez Waghorne, will be to celebrate the execution of Saddam Hussein. Now watch closely, and see if you can find the lady:

(1) "In such an exceptional situation such as this, reaching to the rulebook is a mistake. The judgment on how Saddam ought to be dealt with is a moral one and not a legal one."

From there he goes to the conclusion that

(2) "Morally, the only penalty that is even remotely plausible as a just sentence is the death penalty executed in public."

before adding that

(3) "to require a proof of things so self-evident is to fall into hopeless error and moral disorder."

Too bad. I require proof, which Dick has failed to provide. Sentence 1 advocates a moral, rather than legalistic standard. Sentence 2 asserts that the death penalty is the only just sentence. Sentence 3 calls anyone who disagrees a moral defective and attempts to make a virtue of his lack of an argument. Eagle eyed readers will note the missing link, the part where he considers the morality of public execution as a punishment. Advanced students may have spotted the Fallacy (yes, I know about fallacies too) of Begging the Question in Sentence 1. And for the gold star, don't forget that throwing the rulebook out the window is a denial, not an embrace of morality. Revenge is not morality, because it operates on the basis of emotion and not reason.

I will shed no tears for Saddam Hussein, whatever happens to him, but if Dick's age was judged on the calibre of his argument........well, let's just say that he'd be too young for that glass of Merlot.