Donald Tsang’s Pragmatism

Chief Executive Donald Tsang was on RTHK today and I asked him a question about his statement “I am determined to carry out my work in a sincere and pragmatic way.” Previously Henry Tsang has said that he hoped his budget would be seen as pragmatic.

As a philosophy pragmatism can be summed up as the “principle of not being principled”. Leonard Peikoff sums up pragmatism as follows:

“In the whirling Heraclitean flux that is the pragmatist’s universe there are no absolutes. There are no facts, no fixed laws of logic, no certainty, no objectivity.”

In politics, pragmatism means abandoning one’s principles in favour of the immediate moment or what the majority wants. For example, when Mr Tsang says he will consider the idea of a minimum wage because the vocal minority wants it, he is ignoring the idea of small government. (Ultimately small government comes under the principle of protecting property rights by staying out of the market.) Of course we can still hope that he might reject the mimimum wage because it is an assault on individual rights.

More broadly it can be someone trying to balance out two contradictory ideas of rights. If there is a contradiction one is wrong and no one should be trying to keep that wrong idea in play.

Mr. Tsang ultimately tries to defend his use of pragmatism by saying he uses the concept according to what it means to him. This is just nominalism! How then is anyone supposed to communicate if they all just take concepts according to what they mean to them. (Ayn Rand gives an excellent explanation of concepts in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology).

By diluting or ignoring principles and building vagueness into their use of concepts, Mr. Tsang is building his castles on shifiting sands.

Bali Bombings and Islam – Updated

The recent Bali bombings once again prove that radical Islam in the hands of assasins is not a philosophy of peace, but rather a philosophy of hate – hatred for life in this world. Some have said they will not stop until Islam rules every world city.

This time they decided to kill innocent tourists and local as they set down for some dinner. The Koran they keep citing has repeated references to followers to slay non-believers and these terrorists are just carrying out what they think is the will of allah. Ed Locke and Alex Epstein have done an excellent article on this and explain the terrorists’ motivation as follows:

Second, as with any religion that seeks converts, a derivative tenet of Islam is that it should be imposed by force (you cannot convince someone of the non-rational). The Koran is replete with calls to take up arms in its name: “fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them . . . those who reject our signs we shall soon cast into the fire . . . those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads . . . as to the deviators, they are the fuel of hell.”

(End Quote)

Even though there are many so called “moderate” muslims, it is their religion that provides the spiritual fuel for the horrible acts committed by groups like Al Queda, Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah. Further just as there is a physical battle going on, there is also a battle of ideas that motivates this terror and it is vital to win this battle of ideas. With the spate of terrorist acts going back over 3o years, we should not let anyone say that Islam is a religion of peace and it is up to these so-called moderates to condemn the terrorists and their preachers wholeheartedly.

Indeed, with passages like the above from the Koran, no one should be in any doubt as to its true final intent. It is ironic indeed that Arabs through re-introducing Aristotle to the West helped bring rationality back to Western Civilization. Now the worst in them is trying to destroy that very rationality.

Update: The additional commentary made here is my own commentary and not that of the quoted writers.