Tom Smith writes about Peter Singer in Princeton Professor not eligible for babysitting job:
I am thinking I would not let Peter Singer babysit my kids. In this charming discussion, he allows as how killing a newborn baby is not killing a person. What I want to know is, is killing a Princeton philosophy professor who thinks it’s OK to kill a new born baby, killing a person? And even if it is killing a person, technically, might it still be justified on utilitarian grounds? By killing Peter Singer we probably reduce on the margin the possibility that someday we will live in a world where you can kill new born babies but not eat fried chicken. That’s a lot of utility right there. I would be willing to kill him in a humane way, or at least a not terribly tortuous way. I was thinking maybe dropping 100 tons of bullshit on him. There would be a certain poetic justice in that.
In an entirely different vein, Mike Rappaport summarizes his latest op-ed with John McGinnis in Amending the Filibuster Rule: The Constitutional Option:
The Senate majority’s power to modify the filibuster is strongly supported by constitutional principles. Both the text and structure of the Constitution show that only one of three possible views about the constitutionality of the judicial filibuster is correct. The first view – advocated most recently by Senate majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. – is that filibustering judges is simply unconstitutional. But the Constitution expressly gives the Senate the right to fashion its own rules of procedure and nowhere requires application of majority rule to confirmations.
The second view – advocated by many Democrats – is that a majority has no right to change the filibuster rule because the Senate rules still require a two-thirds vote to end a filibuster mounted against a resolution to change the filibuster. But this Senate rule conflicts with the structure of the Constitution.
The Constitution provides only a single method – the constitutional amendment process – to entrench a rule against repeal by a majority. If Democrats were correct that rules can be insulated from majority amendment, a bare majority in each House could have passed the Bill of Rights and made it our fundamental law by declaring that only unanimous votes by both Houses could pass legislation violating its principles. The Democratic view also conflicts with a principle known since before the framing of the Constitution that one legislature cannot bind subsequent legislatures.
The third and constitutionally correct view is that the Senate can choose to retain the filibuster rule, but that a majority must be able to change it. The Senate can thereby exercise its full constitutional authority to fashion rules of procedure but past majorities of the Senate cannot put current majorities in a procedural straitjacket. Thus, a change in the filibuster rule by a majority is not a “nuclear” option but instead the constitutional option – the route contemplated by our founding document.
Update: In his post, misunderstanding singer, Aaron Kithcart thinks Tom Smith has fundamentally misunderstood Peter Singer:
Singer maintains in his book that life, regardless of the species, should be treated with the same level of respect. When we apply this principle to our society, then by permitting the destruction of animals, we allow ourselves the right to end human life that has the same intellectual capacity of those animals we’ve slaughtered, i.e. babies that are born brain-dead, mentally retarded adults, etc.
I do not know enough about Singer to know who is right, which perhaps is a reason why I should not have linked to Tom’s post. But I often link to posts I find interesting or provocative regardless of whether I agree. But another reader wrote
I was disappointed that you posted the quotation from Tom Smith ridiculing Peter Singer, as I do not think it in keeping with the usual tone of the Volokh Conspiracy. Though I am politically on the left (and, incidentally, a vegetarian since the 1970s, when I read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation), and often disagree with what I read on the Volokh Conspiracy, I read it because its contributors generally post reasoned arguments, not ridicule of positions with which they disagree.
Though offered as a criticism, I take this as a compliment. I think all of us on the VC do strive to adopt a measured and reasoned tone, in part, because of the wide diversity of our audience. I am glad this reader appreciates this even if he thinks I let him down on this, hopefully rare, occasion. But I do think there was more of substance to Tom’s entire post–not just the acidic teaser I excerpted–assuming, of course, that he interpreted Singer’s position correctly.
Further Update: Neo-Libertarian thinks Toms Smith accurately characterizes Singer’s position.
For the record, the excerpt from RightCoast is correct on quoting Singer (my fingers keep typing ‘Sanger’ in a Freudian slip), because all the excerpt blames Singer for doing is saying that killing a newborn is not killing a person. That’s really Singer’s position, so the excerpt is correct. Unlike the correcting e-mail, Singer includes normal-birth babies as well (see the second question in part III of the FAQ).
Read the rest here.
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