Michael McGranaghan

Fan of:
#TTRPG
#Pragmaticism
Meta-ethical realism

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg."
-- Abraham Lincoln

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

"Windfall." As if the Korean semiconductor industry didn't require mountains of effort and sacrifice.

[Reuters @Reuters]

South Korea plans chip windfall fund to back youth, AI investment https://t.co/a8TIlGdJjb https://t.co/a8TIlGdJjb

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@CharlesdeBaulin @charlescwcooke That's the whole subject of politics. That's not something to be answered in a tweet. It's unreasonable to expect an answer to that question as a precondition of beginning a discussion.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@RichWWilliams @johnddavidson That's pretty easy to prove.

In the movie "Logan's Run" society achieved equality of life span by killing e everyone who turned 30. In general, the easiest way to increase equality is to lop off the right end of the distribution. That's not good.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@brodgers01 @johnddavidson It's just not the case that government planning, regulations, and bureaucracy always increase the common good. Take a look at the history of the Twentieth-century.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@ErinOHenry @johnddavidson The question "Who decides what's the common good?" Is structurally similar to "Who decides what 2+2 equals?". Noone decides. It's an objective fact.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@ErinOHenry @charlescwcooke Some people believe in a system called "democracy" in which everyone gets a say in what policies to enact in the pursuit of the common good. That way, you don't have to just trust others.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@charlescwcooke It's not that hard. The common good includes:
Low crime
Public health
Affordable goods and services
Low rates of accidental injuries
Ease of family formation
Long life expectancy
Meaningful work
Rich sense of community
And especially liberty.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@808_38hz @atrupar You might want to review the case of Rosemary Lehmberg in Texas to see how this can go wrong.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@kvallier @yhazony In the tweet below Goldberg says "defining the common good is a hard but not impossible task at a high level abstraction and basically an impossible task at the ground level" Saying it's basically impossible to know the common good is skepticism.

https://t.co/zQB1XYX7y3

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

My problem, well my chief problem, with the common good talk on the New Right is that it is shot through with question-begging. They assume that once you know what the common good is this awareness grants the constitutional authority, the policy skill, the economic and personnel resources and the political mandate to impose it. The knowledge problem just evaporates once they get the gnostic insight into what the common good is. (By the way,
I think defining the common good is a hard but not impossible task at a high level abstraction and basically an impossible task at the ground level).

A vast amount of common good talk strikes me more as an attempt to seize more and more power for a right wing faction that has utterly lost any intellectual humility and policy skepticism. That’s why most of the common good talk is simply the right wing version of the left’s “social justice” rhetoric. “How dare anyone oppose the common good/social justice!?”

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@MadScribeGames @Mad__Overlord High Plains Drifter

[Jay Murray the Brade Runner @jmscotsman31]

Essential piece by @EliLake. Most accurate take I’ve seen yet on the progressive socialist shift within Metro-Detroit’s (Dearborn) scene.

Nobody in the Dem party has the spine or capital to punch left, and a Sista Souljah is laughable.

https://t.co/XL4sThLuKE

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@pmags30 @ConceptualJames @DefiyantlyFree You did not.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@pmags30 @ConceptualJames @DefiyantlyFree The text you attribute to Federalist 45 using quote marks ("to stop people from forcing their version of common good on us") does not appear in the document, not does any argument to the effect that the common good is the aggregate of individual liberty.

2/2

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@pmags30 @ConceptualJames @DefiyantlyFree Walker does not conflate liberties with choices -- at least not in the tweets in this chain. He mentioned choices, not liberties. Your charge of dishonesty is not justified by the evidence you present.

1/2

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@pmags30 @ConceptualJames @DefiyantlyFree Who are you accusing of being dishonest?

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@WilliamAronste3 @ConceptualJames Abstract things are real. Gravity is real. Love is real. The pythagorean theorem is real.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@pmags30 @ConceptualJames @DefiyantlyFree That's correct. People disagree with James Madison.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@ConceptualJames Tyrants also clothe themselves in handsome talk about freedom, rights, truth, liberty, or justice -- whatever the current thing is. 'The common good' isn't unique or special in that respect, and it shouldn't raise any more (or any less) suspicion than any of those other claims.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@DSterling1948 @ConceptualJames @CodyLibolt That's incredible unfair. Everyone who advocates for any policy in good faith is aiming at some common good.

Advocating for policy X always implies that opponents of policy X are mistaken. This isn't something confined to only those on the political right.

[Michael McGranaghan @MackTheMike]

@DrRussellBrown @DSterling1948 @ConceptualJames @CodyLibolt This is straight-up nihilism. The good is an objective reality. Asking who defines it is like asking who defines water as H2O or 2+2 as 4. By reducing the quest for the good to a mere power struggle, you implicitly justify a might-makes-right attitude towards power.