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Archives for April 1, 2011

Top Stories for April 1

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Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi at an appear...
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Since the Huffington Post has been an amazing success, I thought I would try emulating that model and simply repost stories from other sources. AOL, I’m waiting for my check.

Obama’s Birth Certificate Found

The matter has been settled at long last: Obama’s birth certificate has been found and is being delivered via Fed Ex to Fox News. In a shocking turn of events, it turns out that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but in New Jersey-specifically on the Jersey Shore. During an emergency press conference Obama apologized for the deception but defended himself by saying “seriously, who would admit they were born there?”

Qaddafi Steps Down

The rebel forces in Libya achieved victory by getting Qaddafi to step down. When asked how this was done, a rebel said “we had tried violence and that didn’t work. So we tried saying ‘pretty please’ and that worked like a charm. I thank my mother for this. She always said that you catch more dictators with honey than with RPGs.” Qaddafi is now pursuing a career as a Lionel Richie impersonator, but told reporters that he has two backup careers: porn star and fashion model.

Obama Admits He is a Muslim Socialist Atheist Communist

After the truth about his place of birth was revealed, Obama went into full confession mode. With tears in his eyes, he admitting to be a Muslim, a socialist, and atheist and a communist. He resigned as president shortly thereafter, saying that he was so relieved to no longer have to live the lie. “It was tearing me apart”, he said, as he walked away from the podium. As Joe Biden rushed the podium, yelling “this is a [email protected] big deal, I’m President!”, he tripped, fell and broke his arm. When asked for a reaction, the Republican leadership said, “we knew it!”

New Gingrich Admits to Having a Harem

After investigative journalists from MSNBC broke the story, Newt Gingrich admitted that he actually had a harem of  at least twenty “fine [email protected]” When asked why, he said “when a man works as hard as I do for his country, it is hard for him to tell exactly who he is banging. So, the harem was actually kind of an accident. I’d just spend the day doing awesome things for the country, then go to some motel, hotel or house and just bang whatever woman I thought might have maybe been my wife. But, I was thinking of the country the whole time.” Shortly after this story broke, the Republican party declared him the presidential candidate for 2012. Said a spokesperson “that man [email protected] loves his country.”

Snooki Exposed

Famed reality star Nicole “Snooki” Polizz has been revealed as a fraud by TMZ. The gossip site recently posted a scandalous video of Snooki’s dissertation defense. The site also posted text from the actual dissertation in which Snooki (who should now be called Dr. Polizz) defends her alternative to Stephen Hawkins’ theory of black holes. In one revealing page, Polizz presents several formulas she developed during the course of her research.

After being hounded mercilessly by reporters, Dr. Polizz’s bimbo facade finally cracked. With her tears streaking her mascara down onto her ample cleavage, she admitted that her mindless partying and crazy antics had been just an act. Just before driving away, she said “It has long been my secret shame that I am an intelligent and educated woman. I know that this will cause my fans to lose all respect for me, and rightfully so. I wish I could be that empty headed bimbo I portrayed, but I was cursed with a brilliant brain and a gift for physics. No matter how much I drank and partied, my brain still retained its intelligence. I considered a lobotomy, but just could not go through with it. After all, look what it did to Charlie Sheen.  I am so sorry and will be checking myself in for treatment.”

In a related story, the Situation confessed that he, too, holds a doctorate (in philosophy) and has also been playing the fool. Unlike Dr. Polizz, Dr. Situation made no apologies: “Have you seen what they pay philosophy professors? Jack [email protected] As Socrates said, the underpaid life is not worth living.”

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Principles & Pragmatism

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Immanuel Kant developed his own version of the...
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While the United States and NATO has been busily bombing parts of Libya, Obama only recently presented a speech discussing the justification for that action. He also addressed the question of why the United States was intervening in Libya while allowing seemingly similar uprisings to go unsupported. While this oversimplifies the matter, his basic reply was that the United States is acting in accord with its principles, but is primarily acting in accord with its pragmatic interests. In the case of Libya, our professed values happen to coincide with our professed interests. In the case of other places, such as Syria, our professed values are at odds with out professed interests. Hence, we are bombing Libya and not bombing Syria (and doing nothing but support Saudi Arabia).

Some pundits have taken to calling this approach the “Obama Doctrine”, which is a rather silly thing to do. After all, a look at American presidents shows that this sort of approach is actually the “what all American presidents have done and will do doctrine.” Obama’s major change is that he reduced the rhetoric and was honest about the pragmatic aspects of the matter. That, I think, is to his credit.

While this situation raises many moral topics, I will focus on the specific matter of pragmatism and principle. This has, of course, been discussed by thinkers far greater than I, such as Kant. To steal a bit from that fine fellow, there seems to be a clear distinction between acting from moral principles (crudely put, doing what is right because it is right) and acting from pragmatism (doing what seems most likely to serve one’s perceived non-moral interests). In some cases these can, of course, be in harmony. After all, there is no reason why what is right might not also serve to advance one’s practical interests.

However, it is not these situations that provide the test of one’s principles. Rather, the morally challenging situations are those in which one’s principles and perceived practical interests are not in harmony. In one such scenario, one’s principles might provide a moral reason to act while such action might be against one’s practical interests. For example, supporting an uprising in Syria would seem to match America’s professed principles while doing so would seem to be against our perceived interests.  In another scenario, one practical interests might demand action that goes against one’s principles. For example, supporting dictators in the Middle East was long seen as being in our perceived interest while clearly being against our professed values.

On the face of it, to act only when our professed principles and perceived practical interests coincide would seem to show that our principles effectively amount to little or nothing. Truly having principles would seem to require that we act on them even when it is not in our perceived practical interest to do so. This also seems to require that we refrain from some actions, even when taking those actions would seem to be in our perceived interests.  Otherwise what do our principles amount to other than empty words? In any case, we can hardly make a claim to moral goodness or principles if we merely act on the basis of perceived practical self interests and dress it up with high sounding phrases about freedom and rights.

This is not to say that we must be moral saints and always act on principle even when doing so is terribly harmful and contrary to our perceived interests. After all, being principled means doing what is correct and not what is self-destructive or beyond what can reasonable be expected. We may, of course, properly have interests. However, to make a claim to principles these principles must play a greater role than merely dressing up actions we would do anyway on practical grounds.

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