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| by
Perfess'r Harris |
We
at Classics Corner do not know everything.
We are human, and have most of the same limitations
as other mortals. Sadly, our lack of absolute
knowledge sometimes extends into the political
realm, where tough choices must be made based
upon imperfect evidence.
For example, our wife recently told us to
vote Cantwell, despite our preferences for
Senn, because Cantwell could beat Gorton and
Gorton must be defeated. "Slade Gorton is
pure evil," she said.
We wondered whether this was possible. We
became obsessed by the ratio of Gorton's goodness
to evil. We were beyond politics and into
pure metaphysics. The real question, we decided,
is essentially this: Does Slade Gorton have
a soul? Naturally, we turned to Plato for
our answer.
Many of us have been forced to read The Phaedo
at some point or another in our wretched lives,
and may remember it as the dialogue in which
Socrates offers three proofs for the existence
of the soul before serenely sipping his post-prandial
hemlock and finally shutting up.
We at Classics Corner thought it might be
illuminating to apply these general proofs
to the particular case of Slade Gorton.
Our first proof is the Heraclitean doctrine
of opposites. Heraclitus, one of the first
philosophers to appear in Greece, said the
world is change and is based upon opposing
tensions. Day turns into night, sleep into
wakefulness, life into death, and so forth,
in continuous cycles. This insight was extended
substantially by Hegel and transformed into
the basis for communism by Marx, so it would
be very ironic if we proved the existence
of Gorton's soul through the logic of communism.
We at Classics Corner love irony, so we'll
chalk one up for Slade's soul.
The next proof offered by Socrates is the
doctrine of reminiscence. The notion is that
we understand ideal concepts even though we've
never actually seen one; therefore, we must
have experienced the ideal prior to our births.
Ironically, the example Socrates offers is
equality.
We went to the candidate's website, at www.slade2000.com,
and the Dump Slade 2000 site at www.whopaidslade.org,
and found little to no evidence that Slade
Gorton understands the principle of equality,
whether approximate or absolute. We are sorry
to report that the doctrine of reminiscence,
in the case of Slade, offers insubstantial
proof.
The third, last, and lamest proof is that
of constancy. Socrates argues that if the
soul embodies ideal qualities, then those
qualities are not subject to change and must
be eternal. But constancy does not seem to
be Slade's strong point. His campaign website,
for example, says we "need to support our
natural resources as a precious gift." Yet
the League of Conservation Voters says Gorton
only voted the right way on the environment
11 percent of the time last year. His score
the previous year was zero percent.
This lack of constancy does not make a good
case for the existence of Slade's soul.
So there we have it. We at Classics Corner,
despite our best efforts, remain perplexed.
Does Slade Gorton have a soul? We still don't
know. You'll have to decide for yourselves.
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