From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Jul 06 2003 - 22:09:55 BST
Hi Platt and David,
This came through after I sent the last post. So this is my real last post
on the topic (really this time, i swear :-).
P
> You might want to point out where Pirsig said that a right to privacy is
> an intellectual value. If you can't, you're attributing a position to him
> that isn't there, just as the Court found a right to sodomy in the
> Constitution that isn't there.
R
As I've pointed out to you several times now, the Constitution does
explicitly say that it is not an exhaustive list of rights, so I can't
imagine why you still think it's persuasive to keep pointing out that the
Constitution doesn't contain an explicit right to privacy. The 9th amendment
+ 10th amendment = unenumerated rights that belong to the people as
individuals. Nobody (no matter how conservative) disputes this!!! The
debated question is whether privacy is one of those unenumerated rights. Do
you actually have any arguments that SUPPORT your view that it isn't? Texas
didn't... Should they have hired you as their lawyer instead? How would you
have convinced the Court that the framers didn't intend privacy to be
covered by the 9th amendment? As a great man once wrote, "Show some
evidence, please, not just your personal bias."
P
> Pirsig did write this:
>
> "I personally am pro-choice, but I understand the moral integrity of those
> who are not. It is a matter for society through its mechanisms of politics
> to decide and keep deciding as it evolves toward a better world." (Lila's
> Child, Note 92.)
> Pirsig's "codes" appear to be much more tolerant than yours. Moreover, you
> will notice that he comes down on the side of the "mechanisms of
> politics," i.e. legislatures, to decide such moral questions, not the
> courts which are supposed to be above politics. This is also my position.
R
Now you're the one putting words in the man's mouth Platt, "mechanisms of
politics" does not mean "legislatures". Pirsig is a highly educated man,
and the author/editor of a professional level legal-textbook, if he meant
the "legislatures" should decide, he would have said it. But he didn't
(because if he had it would have been akin to endorsing a dictatorship of
legislatures). He meant what he wrote. The mechanisms of politics include
legislatures, but they also include courts, executives, voters,
administrative agencies, private litigants, special interest groups...etc.
"Politics" is the sum of that world, not any one part.
take care
rick
Man is by nature a political animal. - Aristotle
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