I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused

21 02 2012

Nope, not linking to that piece on the purpose of women.

Not because it’s a troll-in-a-post or ludicrous or page-view bait, but because it is so poorly written I cannot understand what he is saying.

Now, I might be offended if I could get through his When-in-the-course-of-Heidegger-skirts-barbarism-feminism-oh-look-a-pony style of, er, argumentation.

Or, y’know, I might just laugh.

Other bloggers have noted that beneath this pundit’s Potemkin’s pretensions is an appeal to natural law.

Natural law: the god-in-the-gaps explanation for all that eternally is when all that is eternally is turns out to be, not.

Jeremy Bentham offers the best riposte* to this sort of metaphysical mystification: Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptable rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense on stilts.

Now that’s a metaphor.

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*I know, not an argument, and he’s talking about natural rights, not law, but, goddammit, “nonsense on stilts” is just too good not to use.

h/t Commenter Spurious on this Crooked Timber thread, and SEK at Lawyers, Guns & Money

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