Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

The 2015 Tour de France is over. Chris Froome of Great Britain won his second Tour in three years. Today's stage winner, Andre Greipel of Germany, averaged 24.06 miles per hour for 68.0 miles.

To the Editor:

Children born in America today may expect to live to the year 2100. What kind of life will our children and grandchildren experience?

Will it be the American dream of our ideals: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”; “equal justice under law”; democracy; equal opportunity and respect; good education and training; a satisfying job and income; security; health and shelter in a sustainable environment with safe food, water and air?

Past civilizations and great powers have risen, declined and occasionally risen again. Examples include Egypt, China, Greece, Rome, Persia, Spain, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Basic causes of past declines include environmental degradation and resource depletion; climate change, floods, droughts, famines; disease; political polarization, social conflict and civil war; military overextension and resource-draining wars; excessive debt; and subjugation by external powers.

Americans need to counter the basic causes of decline that exist here now, as well as other indicators of decline, such as workers’ shrinking share of wealth, decaying infrastructure, inflating influence of money in politics, and plunging proficiency of our political institutions in benefiting the general welfare.

Abroad we need to reverse the declining effectiveness of our efforts to realize and sustain American security, economic and political goals, while avoiding wars, especially a catastrophic nuclear war.

So what shall we do to regain and maintain the American dream for our children and grandchildren, to counter the decline of America and to avoid the disaster of war? Americans must address these questions now, before the next election. Candidates and citizens should specify and critically evaluate what they would do. After new policies are implemented, we need to continually re-evaluate them. The stakes are high—how our children and grandchildren will live, and the continuation of the American dream.

JEFFREY S. MILSTEIN

Burke, Va.

The writer served as a policy and strategic planner in the State and Defense Departments and was an assistant professor of political science and international relations at Yale.

Note from KBJ: Young people need to be taught the importance of four things:

1. Individual liberty.
2. Personal responsibility.
3. Self-sufficiency.
4. Equal opportunity under law.

That's it. Everything else will take care of itself.

Mill's discussion of self-regarding action and the principle of liberty, in On Liberty, coheres with the metaethical account of right and wrong given in Utilitarianism. In both discussions, Mill maintains a fundamental asymmetry between self and other, corresponding to the distinction between the spheres of morality and prudence. In so doing, Mill follows the view of commonsense morality that it is foolish but not wrong to act self-destructively, and prudent but not obligatory to maximize one's own happiness even when that would be optimific. Thus Mill flouts the strict form of impartiality entailed by the metaphor of the impartial spectator, on which it makes no moral difference whose happiness or unhappiness is affected by an act. In Mill's view, morality does not treat everyone's happiness in exactly the same way (as deontic impartiality demands) even though everyone's happiness is of equal value (as axiological impartiality requires). Mill expressly rejects deontic impartiality by claiming that self-regarding but harmful acts are not amenable to moral disapprobation and that we cannot be compelled for our own good.

Any moral view that treats the agent's interests differently from others, in determining the rightness or wrongness of an action, does not adopt strict, deontic impartiality. And any view that rejects deontic impartiality is not consequentialist in the standard sense, widely adopted by philosophers and motivated in the first section of this essay. Yet Mill was a classical Utilitarian, not just because he was called a utilitarian by his contemporaries and identified himself as one, but because his moral theory is teleological and accepts the principle of utility as its axiology. Although my interpretation of Mill's view makes him a highly unorthodox utilitarian, this is in keeping with Mill's self-description, quoted earlier. Moreover, it agrees with the assessment of Mill's contemporaries such as John Grote (who termed Mill a neo-utilitarian) and Henry Sidgwick (who called Mill a "conservative utilitarian" for holding that moral rules issue in genuine obligations). Hence, there is no paradox involved in claiming that there is logical space for a utilitarian theory that rejects consequentialism, and there is considerable evidence for ascribing such a view to that most renowned, though not most orthodox, utilitarian, John Stuart Mill.

(Daniel Jacobson, "Utilitarianism Without Consequentialism: The Case of John Stuart Mill," The Philosophical Review 117 [April 2008]: 159-91, at 190-1 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Note from KBJ: Shorter Jacobson: If you define "consequentialism" in such a way that John Stuart Mill is not a consequentialist, then you get the unsurprising result that John Stuart Mill is not a consequentialist.

A brave man is the one that is not afraid to admit his mistake.

Here.

Here.

Here are scenes from today's stage of the Tour de France. The winner of today's stage, Thibaut Pinot of France, averaged 20.87 miles per hour for 68.6 miles. Chris Froome, the overall leader, lost time to Nairo Quintana, but still has a lead of 1:12 going into tomorrow's ceremonial stage into Paris. Barring accident or sickness or terrorist attack, Froome will win—for the second time in three years. I'm still suspicious about his team's performance. There were many climbs in which he had one, two, or even three teammates alongside him. This, as Lance Armstrong used to say, is "not normal." The Tour organizers and cycling authorities are so corrupt that they probably wouldn't throw Froome out of the Tour even if he tested positive. It would be too damaging to the Tour and to the sport of cycling. Perhaps a few years from now we will hear about a positive but undisclosed test during the 2015 Tour.

The Sky Is Crying (1991). The song was written by Jimi Hendrix, who released a version in 1967.

What is “radical” Islam? “Radical” and regular Islam are merely different parts of the same spear—both have their foundation in the Qur’an, as Christianity does in the Bible. “Radical” Islam is the spear point; regular Islam is the spear shaft.

Christianity and Islam are oil and water. Biblical Christianity says that Christ is God; Islam vehemently denies that. He is a mere man—a prophet and teacher. Islam absolutely rejects Christ as the redeemer God, as “peaceful” Muslims do not need a redeemer, they say, just a guide. Thus, Islam guts Christianity, which says all sinners need the redeemer God.

Hence the very name, Christianity.

So? Three Americans died in Benghazi, “over there.” Four died in Chattanooga, over here. We cannot defeat a misidentified enemy. The constitution protects all American citizens, but we must not allow more Muslims in. And let’s drop the word “radical.”

Jerry Sawyer, Fort Myers Beach