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LIFTON'S VIEWS ARE WRONG1. LIFTON'S VIEWS CAN JUSTIFY ANYTHING, EVEN ALIEN ABDUCTION Martin Kottmeyer, Writer, REALL NEWS, July 1995, Accessed May 29, 2000, http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v03/n07/lifton.html. "With all due respect, doctor. Everyone knows there are people who gravitate to this kind of thing. They read about it, see it on TV, in the movies. This is the pathology of a space-age psychosis. People don't see the Virgin Mary anymore -- now they see alien baby snatchers." The psychiatrist is prepared. "Robert Lifton's work on survivors -- we've all studied Lifton -- the people that he writes about -- the survivors of Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Vietnam -- they all have the exact same symptoms as the people I've told you about; fear, anxiety, nightmares, suspicion -- suspicion especially of the mental health community who consistently misdiagnose them. These are reactions to real trauma. There's no fantasy here." The exchange is from the 1992 mini-series Intruders. The visionary and skeptic are fictional, but the argument is familiar enough. John Mack, the Harvard psychiatry professor who authored the controversial book Abduction was not the inspiration for the Richard Crenna character, but the writer admitted it "ends up being more like John Mack than anybody." Mack said it was kind of spooky how things in it happened to him, notably the credibility questions. People in the production had sat in on his therapy groups. One can find Lifton's name in the acknowledgments of Mack's book. 2. DEFENDERS OF ALIEN ABDUCTION USE LIFTON'S VIEWS Martin Kottmeyer, Writer, REALL NEWS, July 1995, Accessed May 29, 2000, http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v03/n07/lifton.html. This was not the first time that Lifton's name had been invoked by defenders of the abduction phenomenon. Editorializing in the January/February 1987 International UFO Reporter Jerome Clark observed, "A milestone of sorts may have been reached on April 10, 1987, when Dr. Robert J. Lifton, one of this country's most prominent psychiatrists, acknowledged on NBC's Today Show that the UFO abduction phenomenon has yet to be explained and merits serious investigation." In the October 1988 Fate, he regarded Lifton's statement as emblematic evidence of "a quiet revolution" that had taken place as scientific, medical-health professionals displayed a growing involvement, believing the evidence pointed toward "an extraordinary cause" and "a potentially explosive payoff." Elsewhere, he also thought it indicated abductions constituted now "a subject that could be discussed seriously outside the pages of tabloids."
Baker Spring, policy analyst, "PROLIFERATION AND ARMS CONTROL: Balancing Defense, Deterrence, and Offense, ISSUES 2000: HERITAGE FOUNDATION CANDIDATES BRIEFING BOOK NO. 16, 2000, http://www.heritage.org/issues/chap16.html, accessed May 29, 2000. Q. The United States today possesses nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, military satellites, advanced computers, and other advanced military technology. What moral authority does the United States have to say that other countries should not possess the same kind of weapons? A. This question assumes that in the conduct of its foreign and security policies, the United States is the moral equivalent of rogue states like Libya and North Korea. The assumption is flawed. The United States has a track record of using its military power to maintain international security and stability, not to subjugate other people. The United States has a well-earned reputation for being a responsible actor on the international stage.
British Philosopher (1632-1704)John Locke was born near Bristol, England, in 1632. His father was a country attorney and he was educated at home until he went in 1646 to Westminster School, where he remained until 1652. In that year he entered the University of Oxford as a junior student of Christ Church. After taking in due course the B .A. and M.A. degrees, he was elected in 1659 to a senior studentship at Christ Church. In the following year he was made a lecturer in Greek, and later was appointed Reader in rhetoric and Censor of Moral philosophy. In an attempt to uncover the works of Locke, this essay will examine Locke’s notion of: (1) mind, (2) government, (3) moral law, (4) property, and (5) application to debate Locke’s principal work is his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke argued that one could not make progress in philosophical discussion unless one had examined the mind’s capacities and seen what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. He disagreed with Plato’s theory of universals, and denied any unlearned ideas. For Locke, the mind of the new-born child is like a blank sheet of paper. All ideas are acquired from experience and are two kinds: 1. Ideas of Sensation--seeing, hearing, etc., (2) Ideas of Reflection--thinking, believing, etc. That is, the first ideas are simple ones of sensation, where the mind is essentially passive. Later, the mind in an active way forms complex ideas by combining, or comparing, or abstracting the simple ideas. For Locke the relationship between an idea and the object itself is that objects have qualities which produce an idea in the mind. Locke challenges the notion that values are innate, instead he assumes that values are created, sustained, and changed through learned interactions. His two Treatises on Government were published in 1689 and 1690, the years after the Glorious Revolution in England. In his first Ii~a1i~ Locke argued that there was no divine right for monarchs to rule, since God did not put some men above others. In his second Treatise he attacks Hobbes and puts forward a liberal interpretation of the State of Nature. Locke’s basic theory is that humans are free and in this condition all individuals are equal. Locke argues that although the state of nature is a condition of affairs in which humans have no common authority, humans put a great deal of power in the hands of God. We cannot say, therefore that society is unnatural to people. The family, the primary form of human society, is natural to individuals, and civil or political society is natural in the sense that it fulfills human needs. For although humans, considered in the state of nature, are independent of one another, it is difficult for them to preserve their liberties and rights in actual practice. In the state of nature all are bound in conscience to obey a common moral law even though does not follow that all actually obey the law. it is in human’s interest, therefore, to form an organized society for the preservation of their liberties and rights. According to Locke humans know moral law even in the State of Nature. Locke contends that reason, which is that law, teaches all humankind who will but consult it, that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his/her life, health, liberty, or profession. These suggestions of Locke may seem to imply that for humans, ethics is no more than an analysis of ideas. Out of our ideas come a set of rules guiding our conduct but this was not at all Locke’s view of the matter. At least it is certainly not the view which finds expression in society. Instead, Locke defined good and evil with reference to pleasure and pain. Good is that which is apt to cause or increase pleasure in mind or body, or to diminish pain, while evil is that which is apt to cause or increase any pain or to diminish pleasure. Moral good, however, is the conformity of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good accrues to us according to the will of the law-giver, and moral evil consists in the disagreement of our voluntary actions with some law. Locke thought the right to private property was particularly implied by natural law. He argued that the justification of private ownership lay in labor, and was therefore natural. This important idea was based on the notion that since human’s labor was their own, anything they transformed by their labor should become and remain, his/her as well. Property gave humans rights too, such as the right to kill anyone who tried to take his/her property. Indeed property, for Locke, is the main reason humans leave the state of nature and set up civil government. Integrating Locke into contemporary debate practice can take a number of form. Because Locke tends to support some type of constitutional democracy, he may be useful in answering philosophers with Marxist tendencies. In addition, Locke provides useful information in terms of social structures and its impact on rights and values. The debater might be able to integrate Locke’s notion into a criteria or counter-criteria. 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