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

Here are highlights from today's stage of the Tour of Switzerland.

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Don’t be taken in by President Donald Trump’s glad-hand greeting to Kim Jong Un. What have we learned so far of our own “dear leader”? He’s admittedly admired dictators, past and present, those that strong-armed nations to knuckle under at their every command.

Trump, seeing that he couldn’t run the country like his businesses, has issued executive orders in the manner of dictators past, knowing that his congressional toadies couldn’t or wouldn’t object or countersign his destructive directives.

After his other well-publicized boastful comments, Trump openly stated he admires this dictator of North Korea, who inherited wealth and power and who has starved a nation, imprisoned political dissidents, and threatened the world with his small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

More than all recent Republican presidents, Trump seems to have a greater percentage of party members climbing aboard, supporting nearly every edict he’s issued since his inauguration, especially the wholesale approval of the most corrupt administrative Cabinet in modern times.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

— James D. Cook, Schaumburg

The IG Report is a total disaster for Comey, his minions and sadly, the FBI. Comey will now officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI. I did a great service to the people in firing him. Good Instincts. Christopher Wray will bring it proudly back!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2018

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The subjectivist about values, then, is not denying that there can be objective evaluations relative to standards, and these are as possible in the aesthetic and moral fields as in any of those just mentioned. More than this, there is an objective distinction which applies in many such fields, and yet would itself be regarded as a peculiarly moral one: the distinction between justice and injustice. In one important sense of the word it is a paradigm case of injustice if a court declares someone to be guilty of an offence of which it knows him to be innocent. More generally, a finding is unjust if it is at variance with what the relevant law and the facts together require, and particularly if it is known by the court to be so. More generally still, any award of marks, prizes, or the like is unjust if it is at variance with the agreed standards for the contest in question: if one diver's performance in fact measures up better to the accepted standards for diving than another's, it will be unjust if the latter is awarded higher marks or the prize. In this way the justice or injustice of decisions relative to standards can be a thoroughly objective matter, though there may still be a subjective element in the interpretation or application of standards. But the statement that a certain decision is thus just or unjust will not be objectively prescriptive: in so far as it can be simply true it leaves open the question whether there is any objective requirement to do what is just and to refrain from what is unjust, and equally leaves open the practical decision to act in either way.

(J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1977], 26-7)

If you want it . . . take it.

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