A dog eaten anywhere is a dog eaten everywhere.

oh! I see -- or think I see (through a foggy intellect, darkly) -- they think pigs are humans. Surely if you heard someone was eating little boys, you'd feel if not imposed on, honor bound to stop them, right?

But that originates in foggy thinking. Yes, for all I know pigs might have some degree of sentience (honestly, I haven't investigated the matter. Elephants and perhaps dogs and cats seem to.) But the point comes down to HOW MUCH sentience, and what "rights" does it confer? We're fairly sure where we are with humans and even if a human is handicapped he/she is one of us. Genetic "brothers" practicaly, compared to other species. But when it comes to other species, you must ask: if they have rights, do they have responsibilities? What are their responsibilities? What do they contribute to human society to be admitted to "not to be eaten, equal" status.
I'd say until we know better, it remains an allowable area, ethically. Pigs and rats and boys might all feel pain the same way (no, we can't be sure) but one if ours, the others aren't. Human society has an interest in stopping cannibalism. The eating of other species... not so much.
I, on my own, have made a separate peace with cats and dogs who are to me very much "human by adoption". However, I don't propose to travel to cultures where these are eaten to stop it, or even to devote my life to the matter as I would if there were a culture that systematically and culturally ate humans.

So, your "sin" is not self-evident. Now, if pig writes to you and protests, THEN we must take the complaint seriously.

*that said, the prospect of setting chickens free to live in the great wild amuses me. It's something out of a Far Side Cartoon. Chickens are as much a human creation as dogs. They wouldn't last a season. And in my mind is "the great chicken preserve" kind of the equivalent of "poodles of the Serengeti". :) *

The pigs that are eaten were born and raised for the sole purpose of being eaten. If we all decided to stop eating pigs, farmers would stop breeding them, and there would be fewer not more pigs in the world.

I think I see where the "you doing something I don't like imposes on me" argument comes from. These allegedly intelligent people have somehow acquired the belief that they have the right to not be upset or offended.

Stupid, but there it is. I suspect these people are the end results of the pampered babies and children whose self-esteem must be protected at any cost and who weren't ever allowed to fail.

Sarah - how could you possibly have missed "Chicks gone wild! Amazon poultry at its brea... ahem, best!"

I would certainly be imposing on the pigs that I ate if they knew that I was eating them, and quite possibly on the pigs which are doomed to be slaughtered because of the demand I help generate.

But that does not explain how I impose on any people -- no matter how much they might detest my diet.

And if stores that sell meat impose on vegetarians (which they do if we extrapolate the argument from pork to all meat), then wouldn't stores that don't sell meat impose on meat eaters?

Of course, if pigs are human, then I impose on them by eating them. And if rice is human, then I impose on rice because I eat it too.

Your eating pork is an imposition on "Real Jews™" everywhere. Say - the Jewish sect I belong to is rather liberal on that matter. I guess I'm not a real Jew. And my affinity for Aleister Crowley? Well that is an affront to almost everyone everywhere. Spawn of Satan I believe the term is.

I like being an outcast. But the first mate still loves me. And I like that.

Rice is human. Just ask George Bush. But you know I don't have any moral objections to eating Rice.

Craig has it right, if there wasn't a market for pork products there would only be wild boars and no pigs.
Who wants a 200 lb pet that likes to wallow in mud and isn't really cuddly? Ditto chickens. They're disgusting, stupid creatures. My father raised them when I was a teenager, if they weren't stupid, they were vicious.
If we didn't eat them the only ones alive would be fighting chickens.

So by eating them you're ensuring they don't go extinct or are wholly exploited in some barbaric "sport".

So pat yourself on the back for helping preserve pigs and chickens and have a nice grilled chicken with bacon.

I hadn't even considered that rice might have human feelings.

The horror, the horror!

Veeshir -- http://accordingtohoyt.com/2009/10/07/when-the-chickens-roamed-the-earth/

No, you have not imposed anything upon the leftists. They've assumed the burden of outrage by your actions. They are the sole possessors of whom to blame, not you.

Sort of like 'Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission'.

I agree that your eating pork (or any other meat) is an imposition on the PETA people. I don't agree that you are the imposer. Rather they are imposing it on themselves.

Pardon me if I laugh while they give themselves a wedgie.

Sarah, heh.
That's exactly right. Some of those chickens were pretty darn vicious.

Of course, now I want a T-Rex drumstick, original recipe.

A woman's right to choose will always be considered an imposition by some professional aggrieved, whether she chooses a pork sandwich or termination of pregnancy.
Oh shit--- did I just say BBQ = abortion?
Why yes, yes I did.
Your pork and your fetus are not my concern. Have at them. Your choice of utensils and sauces are also not my concern.

Pretty much, I side with Sarah. I'd only point out that the standards based on sentience and the even-more-blurry "imposition" are both in need of defense in the first place. For neither is it obvious what it really means, what it defines, nor what ground it rests on.

It does follow logically, *if* you start from an insane and indefensible position.

The individual wishes to immanentize the eschaton, and feels himself invested with the insight and moral authority to do so.

Your choices are in open defiance of the insight and authority he believes that he has, as such, he sees himself as victimized by your choices.
Because of your recalcitrance, his glorious vision will never be achieved.
You're dooming him to continue living in a fallen world.
I hope you can find some way to live with yourself, you big meanie.

To someone who believes that they have the right not to be offended, you just violated their rights.

There's nothing more to it than that.

I don't even know what 'Immanentize the eschaton' means. I do know as a Conservative and a Christian that we will continue to live in a Fallen world until God remakes the Universe. One difference between Conservatives vs. Libertarians/Liberals....Conservatives don't believe in utopia.

And Borepatch is right.

HMI,
I'm not quite getting your point. I'm not arguing that Imposition is always bad, but it sometimes is. I'm just arguing that its a useless basis for standards.

And I'm glad to see you talking about a basis for standards because thats what this is really about.

What the chief point of this whole hoo-rah is this: You can't impose morality on me! (Shouts the Libertarian) is a nonsensical statement. We all impose.

The question then becomes, what should we impose?

I agree with Eric that the PETA people are nuts, and that Peter Singer is insane (although I prefer monstrous). He's welcome to clog his arteries with all the good pork BBQ he likes (and I'm glad to see its pork, because everyone knows that pork is the best BBQ except for those idiots in Texas.) And I'd be happy to join him, although I prefer shredded pork BBQ with a peppery rub, and some vinegary sauce poured over it.

The last bit also says ....yup, I'm happy to impose on PETA people, and if one of them snatches a lovely pig meat sandwhich out of my hand, I'd love to boot them to the ground, sit on them, eat my sandwhich, and wait for the cops to take them off to jail for felonious snatching of sandwhich.

Or...I'm glad to impose my morality on them. Because my morality is based on reality.

And that means Libertarians need to give up saying 'Don't impose morality on me'. They can still say 'don't impose YOUR morality on me'.

And perhaps I'm not that great a philosopher, but I've repeated myself and repeated myself. I know people who could explain this even clearer than I have, and I suggest you seek out them.

Let me try one more time.

You assign a moral value to being let alone. Some dicator assigns a moral value to you obeying them. You seek to impose your moral value on the universe and on them. They seek likewise.

You say, 'but all I want is to be left alone'. He says 'but all I want is to tyrannize you.'

Why is your desire more important than his?

I can answer that. God made man to be free.

To you, its self-evident that its moral. I'm asking you why its self-evident.

There have been tonnes of people through the ages who thought it was self-evident that other humans were put their to serve them.

You say 'but I'm not imposing on the tyrant'. He says 'I want my right to a slave'.

Or as I said before. Borepatch is right.

Craig had it right. This kind of thinking cannot exist unless you assume that you have a right not to be offended, and that the level of your outrage confers legitimacy to that outrage.

Of course, I wonder how he reconciles that belief with the fact that anti-abortionists are VERY, VERY offended by abortion-performing doctors, clinics, and patients. Wouldn't it be the pinnacle of insensitivity to commit what other people consider murder of children?

Animal rights activists equate animal life with human life. Thus, eating a pig is no different than eating a person. If you don't think it should be legal to eat other people, it shouldn't be legal to eat animals.

Tennwriter,

"Don't immanentize the eschaton" used to have meaning to conservatives. It was a rallying cry. Today, not so much. In fact, imposing your morality on others is the very definition of "immanetizing the eschaton" - attempting to use the barrel of a gun to create Heaven here on Earth - think drug war and "spreading democracy" around.

Libertarians are the only people left who accept the world as it is, instead of what they wish it could be. They know guns and coercive force can't create virtue but must come from the heart, and that government theft can't create wealth.

So whether it's a war on drugs, war on poverty, or a war to "spread democracy" around ... these are the utopian ideals. Not libertarianism.

I'm surprised that you don't understand.

The imposition has nothing to do with someone claiming a right not to be offended, it has to do with them claiming the right to live in a society which does not condone murder. When murderer kills someone, we state that they infringe what we recognize as the right to life. We are not required to stand back and allow them to commit murder, because rights are universal. What is immoral is the infringement of the right, not the specificity of the individual on whom that infringement is visited.

If one believes that a pig (or, say, a fetus) has all the inherent rights of a born human, then buying, selling, holding captive, murdering, buying and selling the flesh without prior consent, and consumption of said pig are all rights violations. You apparently expect someone who believes such a pig has the same rights to life and dignity as they, to stand by and allow you to infringe upon those rights. In their moral scheme they are required to defend those rights. You impose - by force - your moral scheme on them. In this case the force used is your acceptance of a law enforcement regime which accepts your version of morality as valid and the PETA person's as not valid.

What should be obvious is that this imposition is a necessary function of any moral theory. If you expect the murderer not to kill you, you infringe the murderer's potential right to do as he pleases. The fact that you and I do not recognize murder as a valid right requires us to impose our own theory of moral values onto the murderer.

Personally, I don't have a problem with this. There is no moral relativity, and I am happy to accept that my version of morality is correct and any other version is false. Which is why I enjoy a nice pork chop once in a while.

ChevalierdeJohnstone,

I did an informal survey among the "abortion is murder crowd" and the consensus was: misdemeanor manslaughter and the woman goes free.

That doesn't sound like murder to me.

BTW according to Kathy Kinsley (near the bottom):

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/11/letter-to-friend.html

The utopia you dream of can't be obtained even by a liberal application of government guns. You must know this. So what is the point? My guess? Getting women back under control.

Social Conservatives thrive on prohibitions. So do criminals. Makes ya wonder sometimes don't it?

To someone who believes that they have the right not to be offended, you just violated their rights.

That someone thinks I have violated his rights does not mean that I have in fact done that. Otherwise, I have violated the rights of all people who are offended by Americans simply by being an American.

If one believes that a pig (or, say, a fetus) has all the inherent rights of a born human, then buying, selling, holding captive, murdering, buying and selling the flesh without prior consent, and consumption of said pig are all rights violations. You apparently expect someone who believes such a pig has the same rights to life and dignity as they, to stand by and allow you to infringe upon those rights. In their moral scheme they are required to defend those rights. You impose - by force - your moral scheme on them. In this case the force used is your acceptance of a law enforcement regime which accepts your version of morality as valid and the PETA person's as not valid.

This is the same argument. A right is being asserted that does not exist. The mere claim by someone saying I have violated his rights because his morality is offended is not a rights violation per se; only a claim. That a person claims to have a moral system that calls this a rights violation is similarly circular reasoning; it is merely another claim that something that is disliked is a rights violation. Once again, I have not imposed on these people by doing something they dislike. My morality holds that eating dogs is wrong, but dog eaters do not -- and cannot -- impose on me by violating my morality. True, they don't share my morality, but unless they make me eat dogs, how are they imposing theirs on me?

Otherwise, I could claim that it is my "right" that you should not be alive and that therefore by continuing to live you are imposing on me. Calling something a right does not make it a right. Having a moral belief does not create any duty on the part of other people to obey it.

This argument reduces itself to a claim that if someone believes I am imposing on him, then I am. Nonsense.

Long pig. The other white meat. Off the pigs.

======

Being left alone is not an imposition.

If I push on a block of wood I am imposing on it. If I don't push on the block I'm also imposing on it? You must be a Taoist.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2001/06/What-Taoists-Believe.aspx

Positions on abortion, homosexuality, divorce, nonviolence, and social-betterment programs are not unambiguously stated in the ancient texts. One might be able to derive a stance on these issues, but any such stance would be attenuated by the recognition that any stance is just a conceptual abstraction that has little usefulness.

====

Long pork. Its said to be sweet.

And why not?

Because its wrong. Because it violates the rights of a human.

But how do you know?

And why should I accept your view instead of the view of a cannibal? And if I accept the cannibal's view, am I not imposing on you?

Chevalier says it well, better than me. And he asks the question I've been sorta asking 'how can you not get this?'

I at least half suspect its because libertarians don't want to know. If they confess this point, they're dead in the water. No more hysterical denunciations of ordinary common sensical actions.

Eric,
I think you've spent entirely too much time with this tennwriter moron. Have him empty his drool cup elsewhere.

Thank you.

Eric, I read this commenter as simply defining words like "impose" in ways that are not the norm.
The only way to not impose, in this way of looking at the world, is to be the only person on the planet. Each person is sort of absolute moral autocrat, and their mere metaphysical musings somehow have a sort of physical presence that fills the world. There is also no underlying moral code or meaning that can originate outside of the individual. So, as the sole inhabitant of Earth, I get to define and evaluate absolutely everything, which is fine until person #2 shows up on the planet. That person will have opinions that do not match mine 100%, and where we differ, he could be said to be "imposing" his universal values on me...or I on him. Since neither one of us has recourse to an over-arching code of morality or meaning, neither one of us may claim to be right or to occupy the moral high ground.
IOW, in the commenter's universe, HAVING a different world view is equal to IMPOSING a different world view on everyone else. As though we are all fully-overlapping Venn diagrams and there is no free space where people can exercise their will or even their thoughts without automatically "imposing" on the other billions of Earth's inhabitants. The fatal flaw in this equation is the absence of a power factor. The common meaning of the word impose is inextricably tied in with the concept of directly applied power or force.
As the saying goes, I do not think that word means what that commenter thinks it means. OTOH, in the commenter's universe, he/she is entitled to decide that a word has an unconventional meaning and then insist that what logically follows from that unconventional premise is self-evident.

M. Simon,

You are a very intelligent writer but perhaps you do not understand what a "right" is. Our society is so degenerate in moral theory that this would not be surprising and is almost certainly not your fault.

A right is an inherent, indivisible and necessary aspect of an individual. Rights are the essence of what each individual is; the aspects of that individual which are controllable by that individual. This is why we say rights can be infringed but not "taken away". Were your rights "removed" from you, then you would not be capable of being you. Indeed you would be incapable of being anyone. It is interesting that you bring up Taoism. After all your "rights" are really "the way of being you."

Do you know, definitively, each inherent aspect of every individual? No, you do not. Your knowledge is limited, not absolute. You do not "grok". You cannot even be sure that you grok yourself. There exists always the possibility that what you think you understand is not the real truth.

Thus we mortals of limited knowledge speak of rights as "recognized". We recognize the right to life. We recognize the right to liberty in our endeavors and the right to benefit from the fruits of our labor. But bearing witness to a right does not "create" the right - the right was always there.

When you say, "A right is being asserted that does not exist," you are pretending to be a divine creator. What makes you so omniscient that you know exactly what rights exist and what rights do not? In fact you do not know this.

I suspect that you and I share a similar outlook as to what rights we recognize. But ours is Belief, not Knowledge. We Believe that the pig does not have the same right to life which we believe we have, and that this means it is proper for us to kill and eat the pig. But we do not Know. Perhaps we are wrong. Perhaps we do have a right to life, but perhaps we do not have the right to kill and eat other animals. Perhaps if we stopped eating animal flesh and changed our behavior in other ways unknown to us, we would experience intellectual, spiritual, and moral enlightenment and would become more individually "us" than we heretofore believed it was possible to be. To assume that you Know definitively that this is not the case is to assume omniscience. Which you ain't.

Personally, I believe that one of the rights of a pig is the opportunity - not the absolute necessity, but the opportunity - to be appreciated by me for the gustatory sustenance which it provides me. But I might be wrong.

Vanderleun,
Y'know, I've tried to walk off at least once or twice already. Hard to do that when you're the subject of a post, tho'.

And I don't think I've called Eric a moron for not being imaginative enough.

So, I'd say you're utterly off-base. But I do have a very nice silver-chaised drool cup, thank you for noticing.

RigelDog,
You're not the first person who has said things that make me pause in surprise at the way my views are considered. Its clearly apparent to me that Horrible Bogeymen infest the Libertarian Imagination.

How does one get from 'I'm a Conservative and a Christian' to 'no belief in an underlying moral order'?

Its my very point. There IS an underlying moral order, and its as firm and immovable as the Law of Gravity. But before some freak...no it doesn't detail whether the nat'l speed limits should be 55 or 70.

You almost get me otherwise, and I commend you for your clear thinking.

Eric is imposing on PETA when he eats his sandwhich because if PETA tried to stop him, Eric could 1)Draw a gun or 2)Call the police, and either option would be force (which then invalidates your main point).

The point I am attempting to hammer home is two fold. We all impose on one another (except perhaps those without any power), and that is inescapable. Thus the Libertarian critique of Social Conservatives as Statist Theocrat Moralists is nonsense as we are all STM's.

Now that we have removed the chief club that the Libertarians use to stifle their more mature brethren, we can at last have a real conversation about just where it is good and seemly to place our moral codes.

We can ask, as M. Simon does, as to whether Drug Wars do more harm than Legal Drugs. We can admit that Abortion is a serious moral problem, and deal appropriately with it. We can ask....does this regulation do more harm than it heals, and furthermore, according to our moral codes do we even have the right to do this regulation?

Libertarians and Social Conservatives can move beyond this silly division, and actually get to a gov't that is more respective of Freedom (which is one of the Great Moral Values).

The other solution of course if for Socons to just ignore Libertarians and ride rampage right over the top of them. We can do it. The numbers are there. We don't NEED you Libertarians. You could be USEFUL, but there's a deal of a difference between the two terms.

And that brings me to my last point. Rigel, you see me as making my own peculiar word. Not quite. I'm doing what philosophers do. I'm following the logic clearly. A lot of human words have a whole bunch of muddiness in them. What I'm doing is eliminating that muddiness which then clarifies the concepts.

Its not my private meaning. Its the purified essence of the word.

But I'm more than happy to stop this discussion with gratitude toward Eric for his courtesy and thoughtfulness, although I wish he were a bit more imaginative. M. Simon, you're a fanatic, and I know you mean well (mostly).

I'll be happy to see others take up the torch and enlighten the endarkened.

"The point I am attempting to hammer home is two fold. We all impose on one another (except perhaps those without any power), and that is inescapable. Thus the Libertarian critique of Social Conservatives as Statist Theocrat Moralists is nonsense as we are all STM's."

Tennwriter gets it and is absolutely correct. It is very disappointing to me that people so demonstrably intelligent as our host cannot grasp this simple concept.

Life requires the imposition of force. Life refutes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This always and everywhere and everywhen no matter what requires the application of energy to do work. Implicit in work is force: work is force times displacement.

Thus it is not possible to be alive, temporarily contravening the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and not engage in the imposition of force.

The Libertarian would perhaps like to live so as to impose on other individuals as little as possible, but it is categorically not possible to be alive and not impose force in some way. This is a fundamental law of existence and it doesn't care if you disagree.

Eric is imposing on PETA when he eats his sandwhich because if PETA tried to stop him, Eric could 1)Draw a gun or 2)Call the police, and either option would be force (which then invalidates your main point).

Now you're arguing what I could hypothetically do if PETA tried to physically stop me. There are two assumptions beyond my simple question, which was to ask how I impose on PETA by the mere act of eating pork.

Telling me that when I eat pork I use force is absurd.

But then, once it is posited that "it is categorically not possible to be alive and not impose force in some way," then by living I forcefully impose on others.

Obviously, we completely disagree on what it is that constitutes an imposition.

M. Simon, you're a fanatic, and I know you mean well

I'm a fanatic and I don't mean well to the statists of the left and right.

And for all practical purposes it is the statists of the right who gave us the drug war and via that the TSA.

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2010/11/for_the_childre.html

And now you want TSA/drug war enforcement against abortion? Are you insane?

Mr. Scheie,
Let us agree to conclude this conversation for now. I think we're pretty close to an impasse. As I said before, I'm not sure how to explain it any better than I have. So, if we continue, we're just wasting time. Others may carry the torch forward if they wish, and I think that a good thing, but I've had enough for now.

As to M.Simon,
We'll see. My little puppet is being most amusing with his 'Hulk Smash' routine.