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Daily Bloggerback
Best of Blogs Round-Up: March 17, 2006
Edited by Pierre Tristam/Candide's Notebooks
Quote of the day: "You don't know the meaning of true love until you interrupt your dinner, every night, to go wipe someone else's ass." Motherhood described in one sentence—Bitch Ph.D.
Featured Blog I: Canal+
Mouthy Uprising
Little Red Boat  /March 5, 2006
Tuesday morning. I half limped, half crawled up to the pharmacy counter, looking like a smart-casual crack whore - veins visually pulsing, cold sweat dribbling from my ears.
“Painkillers” I said. “Please give me. Please give me the strongest painkillers you can give me over the counter. Please.”
“What for?” She said - the lady behind the counter. It’s time like this I wish that toothache would bleed, or glow or throb - it’s impossible to get across, as an ailment, without talking about it, which is the thing that hurts the most.
“Toothache. For toothache. I have toothache, and I can’t get in to see the dentist for several more days”
That was true. It was also true, of course, that I wouldn’t get to see the dentist until I actually summoned up the courage to phone the dentist. Read the rest at Little Red Boat...
Featured Blogger II: The Spinoza of Marblog Street
On Morality
Hilzoy, Obsidian Wings  / March 13, 2006
Once upon a time, I went to a gathering of liberals and conservatives that was intended to promote dialogue and understanding between the two groups; and I was struck by the fact that whenever someone learned that I was an ethicist, they immediately assumed that I was a conservative. This seemed odd to me: it was several decades over a decade* ago, before 'moral values' had emerged as a political term, and at that point I couldn't imagine why anyone would suppose that conservatives had a lock on moral values. (This was not just partisanship, or a reflection of the fact that my moral beliefs underwrite my political views. It was also due to my having spent several decades being lectured by conservatives about my "excessively idealistic" views -- e.g., about how it was silly to think that we shouldn't support, say, Guatemala in the early '80s "just" because it was murderous and repressive. It was genuinely surprising to discover that the very people who had made these arguments were regarded as champions of morality.) These days it's more obvious why someone might think that. But it's deeply regrettable. There is a straightforward moral case to be made not just against the current crop of Republican politicians, but also, I think, for liberal values. But as long as we cede moral language to conservatives, we will not be able to make this case effectively. Nor will we be able to speak to the legitimate fears of people who (correctly) think that morality is extremely important, who are worried that it's under seige, and who (mistakenly) suppose that only conservatives are willing to speak up for them, or that defending morality involves an obsession with preventing gay marriage, or something like that. If we want to reclaim moral language, however, we need to get comfortable with the idea of making moral judgments. Some of you already are, of course, but some of the reactions to my Evil post made me think that some of you are not. Therefore, I have written a short primer. Read the primer at Obsidian Wings...
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