Adam Serwer expressed my thoughts above regarding the conservative Supreme Court better than I did:

In theory, originalism is committed to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning as it was understood at the time of adoption. This should lead to legal outcomes that liberals prefer sometimes and outcomes that conservatives prefer other times. In practice, it has most frequently been an undead version of the supposed “living constitutionalism” it rejects, a method of rationalizing and using history to offer a patina of legitimacy to the preferred outcomes of the Republican Party or its key constituencies. This reality has become more and more clear to the public since conservatives on the Court obtained a 6–3 majority, and began to reshape society on the basis of right-wing whims and obsessions.
Originalists are not supposed to rule based on the impact of their decisions, a tendency they derisively refer to as “results-oriented judging.” Instead, they are merely supposed to ensure that the law is implemented to the letter, as it was intended to be. Indeed, all of the self-identified originalists and strict constructionists in the conservative intelligentsia should be demanding this provision be enforced as written, damn the consequences. If these labels had any meaning for most of them, they would be. — The Colorado Ruling Calls the Originalists’ Bluff by Adam Serwer

If the Gorsuch ruling is indicative of a consensus, the Supreme Court's present inclination against Federal initiatives could lead to them to letting each state decide by itself; Quite a change from counting dangling chads.

I don't either. I just don't have it all the time. It's not a judgement, it's just the way my consciousness is. I wasn't aware of it until I met someone who had an internal voice all the time. It's through contrast that things come into awareness. — frank

It is through contrast that we can come to realize the differences in our experiences from each other. This sort of introspection is entangled with the language of reporting experience. It is not a denial of unique experiences to question to what extent such comparisons reveal about another life as lived by another. Bearing witness to oneself is not an activity that is guaranteed to give us what is present against a background of what is imagined. Sharing what is imagined is one of the self-evident functions of language.

The conditions of introspection bring into question what the "internal" scene consists of. Does the experience of ourselves pop-up like a prairie dog in a field or does it emerge through development over time?

Attaining the competence to act independently is directly involved in the personal sense of privacy within relationships and exchanges with other people. Being able to speak for oneself is a way to resist some other agent from filling in the blanks for you. Having the ability is learned along with not doing it all the time.

The report of, "not being able to turn the voices off", sounds like it inhibits a person the way over-deliberation of a plan interferes with performance during the work carrying it out. It is natural to ask what is fundamental and necessary to a person and what are activities that can change.

It's not like this would stop being true if he won the primary. — flannel jesus

This brings in a state's right question. If the decision is upheld by the Federal Supreme Court, that court limiting a state's power to repeat their decision when the general ballot is drawn would require a contortionist fit of legal reasoning to come so soon after whatever gets validated by a ruling on the primary ballot.

The weight given to each state's prerogative to administer the election will become greater if the Supreme Court supports the ruling.

Donald Trump is barred from Colorado’s 2024 primary ballot, the state Supreme Court rules.

That should give the Supreme Court something to look forward to.

I don't look at 'internal discourse' as an excess of an activity.

Talking too much limits perception. That is a condition we can observe. Personal conditions are both too close and too far.

But do these limitations tell us anything about thinking through language?

Only some people have it. — frank

There are people who don't use language to think by themselves?

If that does happen, how can personal testimony work as a reliable report of such a lack of experience?

When somebody says: "This does not happen to me", where is the contact point between the diverging experiences? There has to be enough shared experience to point at a breaking point of difference if such a proposition does anything.

If the justification for punitive damages is to stop the injury from being repeated, the dollar amount was not enough.

How absurd that judgement might be needs to be assessed in the context of the differences between criminal and civil law, especially as that regards the application of Tort law. The distinction between compensation and punitive damages is still a loose ball in U.S jurisprudence as explained in this SEP article on Theories of the Common Law. The matter is described there as:

This entry examines philosophical accounts of tort law, distinguishing its obligations from other types of private legal obligation, and distinguishing its characteristic remedies from the punitive responses of the criminal law and from administrative regulation. It focuses exclusively on tort law within common law systems, that is, legal systems descended from English law, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the United States. Other legal systems, originating in continental Europe, are usually described as “civilian” systems. They have detailed civil codes covering many of the same issues as the common law of torts. Some civilian systems share many doctrinal features with common-law system; others, particularly France, offer fundamentally different ways of dealing with the same set of interactions and the problems to which they give rise. — Arthur Ripstein

The purposes and justification for distinguishing compensation from 'punitive damages' is easier to measure when the damage is 'in kind.' The Dominion suit against Fox, for example, gave ways to calculate monetary loss. The case was settled so no punitive damages were involved. Punitive damages often become an issue when paying compensation by itself does not stop the defendant from injuring the plaintiff again. Dominion must have satisfied themselves on that score.

The Giuliani case involves monetary consequences that are difficult to calculate. The harm and fear along with the burden of disrepute imposed upon the life of the plaintiffs are incommensurate with any particular financial penalty. If the defendant does not accept that an injury has occurred, the only instrument left to get something from them is with money.

The need for the incommensurate quality of injury and redress is because it is something the defendant can elude responsibility for altogether if not applied. A common example is making the cost of repeating the injury too expensive for an agent to write it off as an expense incurred in the course of doing business.

The problem of arbitrary values being assigned by juries is an ongoing matter for constitutional law. Limited guidance and obscure means of calculation bring challenges to fairness and due process. The argument made by Mark A. Geistfeld does a good job of showing how this relates to case law. I agree with his proposal as a way to make this process better:

Even if this damages practice passes constitutional muster, the ideal of due process does not disappear. As compared to current practice, the tort system could adopt a more constitutionally defensible method or determining pain-and-suffering damages by being more true to the constitutional values of notice, predictability, and reasoned decision-making. Such a tort system may also be more secure from legislative reforms like the tort-reform bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in March 1995, which capped pain-and-suffering damages in a section of the bill entitled "Limitation on Speculative and Arbitrary Damage Awards."8 2

As the issue of pain-and-suffering damages illustrates, the tort system can be guided by the ideal of due process without abandoning its reliance on fairness and individual rights. In a rights-based tort system, damages for pain and suffering provide redress for rights-violations. Money is not equivalent with the right, nor can money represent the value of the pain and suffering. These characteristics of the tort right do not imply that there is no method for determining the appropriate form of redress for a rights-violation. Au tort right creates a corresponding duty of care for the duty-holder. To determine the safety precautions required of the duty-holder, the standard of care must monetize pain-and-suffering injuries. To violate the plaintiff's right, the defendant must have breached the duty of care in a manner that caused injury to the plaintiff, making it appropriate to redress the rights-violation by relying on the way in which the standard of care monetizes the injury. Not only does the nature of the tort right provide a method for determining the amount of damages, it also provides the foundation for a tort award that can be securely defended from constitutional attack — Geistfeld

This above is a roundabout way to say that the damages were not based upon what Rudy could cough up. Probable factors include the lack of full acceptance by Giuliani that injury had occurred. His lawyers argued the damage was less but did not argue how to evaluate it. The decision does not look absurd with the latest move by the Mayor:

The judge later ruled that they were false and defamatory. But now Giuliani is pulling a remarkable public about-face. In an interview outside the courthouse on Monday night, Giuliani claimed that “everything I said about them” — the two women — “is true.”

“Of course I don’t regret it,” Giuliani said. “I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes.”

When it was pointed out that there remains no proof of that, Giuliani responded, “You’re damn right there is. Stay tuned.” — Aaron Blake

If a form cooperation is agreed upon, that means the agreement itself is order of a kind, at least to the extent it recognizes members as equal.

One of the 'live and let live" portions of that agreement is that sovereign nations have limited influence upon coercive practices within other ones. It is hard to see how that sort of permission can count as a model for the libertarian form of life that dispenses with coercion of any kind.

To which states are you referring to? The Westphalian ones?

The agreement to international standards and development of cooperative projects and institutions is agreed to by each member. If they are all one against all, the activity is meaningless.

Thanks for considering it.

There are substantive issues at stake and Talel has every right to point to problems with the law. I was disappointed that he exaggerated his version of the situation to dismiss the merit of the trial.

Through the application of equal rights, individual sovereignty, and voluntary cooperation, it appears a viable model of anarchy has arisen to govern states themselves. — NOS4A2

The sovereignty of "equal members in the organization" is not the equivalent of anarchy such as you depict. The comparison with those national associations and the forms of authority employed by individuals in their community overlooks where Hobbes saw the desire to stop violence as integral to daily life became a common interest amongst many.

This kind of imagery was the personification of the corpus politicum, the “body politic”, as it reigned in medieval political thought. — NOS4A2

The medieval vision was more like Aquinas description of the leader, an artist living in the greater work of the Big Guy.

[101] These are, briefly, the duties that pertain to the office of king in founding a city and kingdom, as derived from a comparison with the creation of the world. — Aquinas, DE REGNO

Not the logic of Hobbes of finding the creation of order through an exchange of permissions and restraints. The deal is struck between men.

Which part is simple minded?

That is what you assert but do not support except by noting it is something you have observed.

All contempt, no cattle.

You charge me with complicity in a destructive force and then gloat about your view from a commanding height.

Pretty ripe from the bloke scorning easy contempt.

Create, that is, according to your model.

Who am I in it? Who are you? Were you damaged by this creation you reference?

The disdain for ordinary people, the "all means necessary" approach confirming one's own moral bankruptcy while pretending to have a moral high ground, etc. — Tzeentch

It seems you have located a basket of deplorables. This charge of moral and intellectual hypocrisy is as dismissive as the one you complain about.

Are the '80 million people' all being humiliated for not sharing liberal values or do some think they are being ripped off by other people and see the language of equal rights being one of the ways that happens. The game is rigged to benefit certain people. Trump promises a turkey in each of other pots to cover the loss.

The talk of "wiping out vermin" may not concern them. Accordingly, they will have little control over how those agendas will be carried out.

In a sense it's a good thing that change now seems to be on the horizon, because the longer it is forestalled, the more extreme the eventual swing will be. — Tzeentch

It is evident that you have your own model of how the game is rigged. Theories of political economy do not represent all that is at stake in shaping and providing for a civic society. We cannot afford the luxury of Lucretius watching the ship sink at sea while standing safely on the beach.

Talel is incorrect when he says that no bank confronted the false accounting statements. Deutsche Bank did so as the scope of the fraud became known:

It was now lawyer versus lawyer.

"As you know, Donald J. Trump is required under the terms of his loan guarantees to provide annual financial statements to Deutsche Bank and to ensure that those statements 'are true and correct in all material respects,'" the bank's attorney, Gregory Candela, wrote, quoting from the guaranty agreement for the $170 million Old Post Office loan.

Candela repeated Deutsche Bank's request for "further information" on the AG's fraud allegations. Then he upped the ante, saying the bank needs that information in order to decide "whether an event of default may have occurred." — Laura Italiano

The fact that the loan payments were paid on time has nothing to do with the stated value issue. That the bank profited from an undervaluation is not sustainable for institutions that establish conditions for other customers.

The Executive Law Section 63 that Talel refers to has the following duties assigned to the office:

12. Whenever any person shall engage in repeated fraudulent or illegal
acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality in the
carrying on, conducting or transaction of business, the attorney general
may apply, in the name of the people of the state of New York, to the
supreme court of the state of New York, on notice of five days, for an
order enjoining the continuance of such business activity or of any
fraudulent or illegal acts, directing restitution and damages and, in an
appropriate case, cancelling any certificate filed under and by virtue
of the provisions of section four hundred forty of the former penal law
or section one hundred thirty of the general business law, and the court
may award the relief applied for or so much thereof as it may deem
proper. The word "fraud" or "fraudulent" as used herein shall include
any device, scheme or artifice to defraud and any deception,
misrepresentation, concealment, suppression, false pretense, false
promise or unconscionable contractual provisions. The term "persistent
fraud" or "illegality" as used herein shall include continuance or
carrying on of any fraudulent or illegal act or conduct. The term
"repeated" as used herein shall include repetition of any separate and
distinct fraudulent or illegal act, or conduct which affects more than
one person. Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, all monies
recovered or obtained under this subdivision by a state agency or state
official or employee acting in their official capacity shall be subject
to subdivision eleven of section four of the state finance law.

In connection with any such application, the attorney general is
authorized to take proof and make a determination of the relevant facts
and to issue subpoenas in accordance with the civil practice law and
rules. Such authorization shall not abate or terminate by reason of any
action or proceeding brought by the attorney general under this section.

Talel's claim that the law has never been applied before this case repeats Trump's claim of the same. That is challenged by the following report:

Trump’s claim that statute 63(12) has “never been used before” is false, with the New York AG using the law to bring lawsuits against such parties as a leasing company, e-cigarette company JUUL Labs and a predatory lender company. The Trump Organization case isn’t even the first time 63(12) has been used against Trump and his businesses, as former AG Eric Schneiderman previously sued Trump University under the statute, which resulted in a $25 million settlement in 2018. — Alison Durkee

I meant to include all the people who demand a continuous understanding of what can go wrong and why on the job.

Saying grumpy old people is too broad a stroke. Impatience with the dangers of ignorance, has to become applied by the rookie to themselves if they are to become artisans through their methods of work. Or perhaps only I hear the voices in my head after years of being yelled at....

The philosophy of risk should be the psychology of risk. As a former rock climber for over fifty years I have observed the interplay between physical risk and reputational risk. — jgill

How to understand performance is a proper inquiry of psychology. The interplay of different kinds of risk you report sounds scary. My inner OSHA supervisor is trying to steer me in the other direction.

If I do x, will I be broke, deported, divorced, broken or some combination of the above? Living in a world of accidents, calculation of chances taken is limited by ignorance and the illusion of knowledge.

The carpenter does not know the twisted grain will cause the wood being cut on the table saw to become a projectile thrown with the power of three horses until he tries it. Intervention by means of a mean old person or industrial psychologist can improve the learning curve but every student needs to see their maker in some fashion to start paying attention to signs and portents. Aristotle pointed out that there is no theory of the accidental. There will be a test.

The illusion of knowledge has its own set of problems. Oedipus tried to avoid an outcome in such a way that it caused it to happen. Is there a way to avoid the unwanted feedback loops that emerge through some efforts to avoid bad things?

Suddenly, the roster of mean old people and psychologists thins out precipitously.

I am proposing that a significant contingent of his support comes from those who want to preserve society in their image. Take, for example, the conservative cultural warriors who want to control education and reproductive rights (both physical and institutional). They are seeking the power to bring those social conditions into fruition.

The existence of many agendas makes me doubt how much these groups actually share beyond their shared enemies. The rappers of "Great Again" share the couch with secessionists cradling automatic weapons in their bunkers. They are watching different movies in their head.

Do you see your promotion of Trump in these terms?

Do you observe "a naturally evolving being" that the OP describes?

I was not arguing for the linear spectrum. On the contrary, I am questioning the orientation as has been offered above.

I mean to say that I do not receive an image through your description.

Abandon both wings, make of the absurd political spectrum a triangle, put right and left at the bottom, and add your own at the pinnacle. Now you have a direction. — NOS4A2

Speaking of dreams, yours call from a secret place.

Does it? Do you agree with Thatcher that there is no society? — frank

As you marked Trump as the standard bearer of the Right, it can be noted there are communitarians of the stripe Thatcher appealed to that support him but that crowd does not represent those who are more interested in getting a greater share of the pie from society, whoever is behind the counter.

And then there are religionists who seek the influence of secular organizations to vouchsafe their interests and powers of reproduction. The Federalist's Society is not promoting Proud Boys for their program. The nationalist agenda of Bannon world needs the apparatus of Federal power to get what they want.

It was these motley stragglers of a travelling show I was referring to as the 'party', not a theory of social leadership.

It sounds like you are using "society" simultaneously in the sense of pre-political activity of individuals and a realm of phenomena that displays regularities of a certain kind. This permits a prosperity Christian and a social Darwinists to root for the same team in a game of chance.

To arrive here, you have to stop being sanctimonious and see a social group as it is: a naturally evolving being, playing out it's own story. — frank

How shall we characterize this being? It sounds as fictional as the 'left' you refer to. The majority of Trumpsters I have encountered believe they are getting what they want by blocking others who want other things. What is the essential spirit guiding these different people? Are the wreckers of the Constitution feeding from the same plate as the bovine consumers made conspicuous at Walmart through the lens of Veblen's description of class?

To me, it looks like they all came to the party with their own supply of dreams.

I think everything should be legal.
— NOS4A2

Why are supporting Trump then? He certainly doesn't think "everything should be legal". Far from it. I would think, based on what you've said, you'd be better off writing in some anarchist's name. — RogueAI

It certainly has a nihilistic tang. No effort is made to connect this view with the political statements being made concerning the immediate environment.

Perhaps we are witnessing a performance in the style of Dada, an expression such as that considered by Ball:

In 1916, German writer Hugo Ball, who had taken refuge from the war in neutral Switzerland, reflected on the state of contemporary art: “The image of the human form is gradually disappearing from the painting of these times and all objects appear only in fragments....The next step is for poetry to decide to do away with language.” — Hugo Ball

But that sophisticated self-awareness of the absurd is absent from using a Liar's paradox way of saying "everything is permitted." The absence of law is the state of Nature envisioned by Hobbes, the war of each against all.

As such, the statement is a contradiction masquerading as an idea. What is desired is only expressed as a subtraction.

I support the rule of the people. I don’t support your version of democracy, which is no doubt conflated with electioneering, vote-grubbing, and representative government. — NOS4A2

It sounds like you favor major changes in the U.S. Constitution; or scrapping it entirely for a new form of political participation.

Your descriptions of Trump do not place him in the context of the partisan processes you scorn. The talking points you use to argue your points come from those processes.

Trump would have won in 2020 if he had gained a few more Electoral votes. Few things exemplify the legacy of 'representative' polity better than the Electoral College.

The views you advance on the nature of government do not connect with reasons why you support Trump so assiduously. That is in stark contrast to those who support him because they see him as the best chance to gain their interests in the present conditions.

I wonder if the 'madness' that Socrates refers to might be likened to ecstasy (ex-stasis, outside the normal state)? — Wayfarer

One could read Socrates hanging back from the party to commune with his thoughts at the beginning of the Symposium as a bout of "divine madness." He is literally 'standing outside' on a porch such as Diotima describes the homeless might be found to sleep upon.

That image also compares one kind of 'absorption' with the wine that overwhelms the others.

This why the lawsuits against Fox for amplifying lies are important. The lies would be curses uttered in a parking lot without that power.

I was reluctant to address your observation about my writing; The idea that it might be better than it appears is encouraging. Is the deficiency a penchant for merely making connections between texts rather than explicating a thesis?

The self-coup would have been likely bloodless. — ssu

I take your point that Trump wanted his regime delivered to him like a take out meal but I doubt that such an attempt would have been bloodless.

We will never know what would have happened had Pence done as he was told. Such a bold venture of disenfranchisement would be performed in plain sight rather than lurk in the dank Venezuelan basement that houses the MAGA dream.

I don't see how the Supreme Court could bury this within the hanging Chads that enveloped Bush and Gore.

Those teachers did not know how the writer's mind works. — L'éléphant

This is interesting when looking at how Plato is working with Diotima's account.

In the dialogue of Symposium, Socrates is supposed to give his explanation for what eros is but recounts a dialogue instead. This dialogue presents a friendly conversation between the philosopher and the poet in stark contrast to others Plato has written, such as the Republic, as noted by Fooloso4:

All of this is, in my opinion, Plato's philosophical poetry, intended to replace the teachings of the traditional poets. In the Republic it is not simply that poetry is banned along with the traditional poets, they are replaced by Plato's own images of the just, beautiful, and good. — Fooloso4

Within the Symposium, I see a likeness between Diotima's:

First, he is ever poor, and far from tender or beautiful as most suppose him: [203d] rather is he hard and parched, shoeless and homeless; on the bare ground always he lies with no bedding, and takes his rest on doorsteps and waysides in the open air; true to his mother's nature, he ever dwells with want.

and the sober exit of Socrates from the gathering:

When Socrates had seen them comfortable, he rose and went away,—followed in the usual manner by my friend; on arriving at the Lyceum, he washed himself, and then spent the rest of the day in his ordinary fashion; and so, when the day was done, he went home for the evening and reposed. — 223d

The tension between being homeless and also a keeper of a house reminds me of Odysseus. The wiliness Diotima observes in the Lover is exemplified by the hero on his journey home. But Socrates is travelling in a different way.

My question is: if this Eros is not innate to the soul (having to be instilled in society), where does it start? — dani

In the mythological explanation provided by Diotima in Plato's Symposium, Eros is the child of very different parents:

Now, as the son of Resource and Poverty, Love is in a peculiar case. First, he is ever poor, and far from tender or beautiful as most suppose him: [203d] rather is he hard and parched, shoeless and homeless; on the bare ground always he lies with no bedding, and takes his rest on doorsteps and waysides in the open air; true to his mother's nature, he ever dwells with want. But he takes after his father in scheming for all that is beautiful and good; for he is brave, strenuous and high-strung, a famous hunter, always weaving some stratagem; desirous and competent of wisdom, throughout life ensuing the truth; a master of jugglery, witchcraft, [203e] and artful speech. By birth neither immortal nor mortal, in the selfsame day he is flourishing and alive at the hour when he is abounding in resource; at another he is dying, and then reviving again by force of his father's nature: yet the resources that he gets will ever be ebbing away; so that Love is at no time either resourceless or wealthy, and furthermore, he stands midway betwixt wisdom and ignorance. The position is this: no gods ensue wisdom or desire to be made wise; — Plato, Symposium, 203b

What is innate is the condition of constantly moving between receiving the benefits of Resource and undergoing the desperation of Poverty. This ever-shifting ground shows us that the urgency of desire is not only a movement toward fulfillment but is a form of life.

What is the highest good for the lover requires this urgency in order to come to life.

Houston, Texas, USA

Rahner's idea is congenial to various expressions of Neoplatonism prevalent during the formation of 'Christianity'. But it is sharply at odds with the expectation that one world would pass away and be replaced by another as promulgated by Paul. The need for a particular credo to be the focus of a congregation was directly tied to an expectation of change throughout the entire world.

In Augustine, this was expressed as the need for a vanguard who lived amongst themselves in a City of God while also living in a City of Men.

You keep using the world to imagine the scenario that it does not exist.

I was not sure if my perception of the real time vision would actually be counted for as a legitimate perception of the world in any sense at all be it logical, epistemic or physical perspective. — Corvus

What is a 'logical legitimate perception? The Humean presumption that we have experiences prior to reasoning renders the idea unimaginable. From that perspective, the answer to your question, 'is there a reason to believe in the existence of the world?' is no.

But we do not need an answer to that to do anything else beyond the question. That is in contrast to philosophical questions that are concerned with how we inquire into the nature of beings.

I am minded of the scene in the Odyssey where dead souls in Hades can speak for a short while if blood from a living person is poured into their cup. You imagine a visitor who demands to know why the soul does not speak when no blood is offered.

Back when the Davidson essay was first discussed here, one can read it without paying. Does anybody know of an alternative to JSTOR?

Wasn't he then falling into the skeptical arguments, and then concludes that the nature of human mind comes first, which forces us to believe in the external world? I am not sure if he meant it with all his true honesty. — Corvus

Which passages are you referring to?

Your question does not answer mine. Is reason an activity that exists while nothing else does? Is that activity something that can be known without reference to beings? I doubt that.

In the way Hume frames the knowledge of causes, he distinguishes between making judgements through deduction using logical propositions and other ways of learning about them. The 'reasons' you are waiting for have nothing to do with learning. As far as the intellect goes, it is interesting that both Plato and Aristotle viewed the indifference to learning causes of beings to be a misologos, the hatred of reason.