From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Fri Jun 03 2005 - 22:08:33 BST
Dear Platt,
You
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 1:50 PM
> Thanks for straightening out the NY Times report on why the EU
> constitution referendum was defeated. As usual, the NY Times got it wrong.
> We cannot believe America's "newspaper of record" any more. It has gone
> over to the dark side.
I cannot judge whether the quotes from one NYT article by Richard Bernstein
are representative of the quality of the newspaper as a whole. They were not
so much 'record' in my opinion, but rather 'opinion', 'interpretation',
'analysis': gauging the meaning of recorded events. That seems a legitimate
element in quality newspapers to me, as long as it doesn't marginalize the
'recording' element.
Gauged 'meaning' cannot be said to be 'right' or 'wrong'. It simply is or
isn't ... 'meaningful' for a particular person who is in a particular
relationship to the recorded events. I.e. it helps him/her to beter define
his/her relationship to those events or it doesn't. "What would I have voted
in that situation? How may the outcome affect me?"
The newspaper I read, the Volkskrant, regularly features translated
opinionating articles from the NYT. Some 3 out of 4 do help me in this
sense, even though I agree with about half of them.
> > Allowing immigration implies freedom, doesn't it...?
...
> I'm all in favor of freedom, but I think the MOQ would say that
> immigration control is a social value that intellect would support in
> order to maintain social cohesion. When a society is overly burdened due
> to an influx of people that strains social services, it is threatened with
> disintegration. Such threats do not bode well for intellect's continuing
> effectiveness and influence which depend on a viable social base.
> However, as you rightfully point out, social values can become too
> restrictive. Better to err on the side of freedom.
Wouldn't the MoQ say that 4th level patterns of value are supposed to go off
on purposes of their own rather than to go on supporting 3rd level patterns
of value? Meaning that they try by definition to free themselves from 3rd
level patterns of value as soon as they are not dependent on them any more.
So to the extent that free movement of people is possible without
threatening the 3rd level basis of 4th level patterns of value, it should be
supported. We once discussed before that with modern technology social
security systems can be devised (and in the Netherlands increasingly work in
a way) that doesn't burden them with recent immigrants. They don't have
rights to social security and the system is able to discriminate between new
immigrants and others.
The fact that people project fears resulting from a stagnating economy on
immigrants (i.e. make immigrants into a scapegoat) doesn't seem a valid
reason to me to support immigration control. It IS a reason to better
educate these people.
A lot of analyses of the referdum outcome in the Netherlands point out that
the 'yes'/'no'-division was to a large extent along 'educated'/'relatively
uneducated' lines... The towns where 'yes' won are without exception towns
with a large cosmopolitan, well-to-do, highly educated, elite part of the
population.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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