Thought you all might like to read this.

The forced forfeit of freedom in return for a nation's promise of security has often been a subject of great distress and debate, but most often in the degree of compromise as opposed to the totality of either—fully free without protection from other free agents or fully subjugated without freedom to become an individual. This arrangement between man and nation, and the debate on the severity of compromise, can be moderated by a force that is responsible for the rational implementation of democratic ideals upheld by documents such as the United States Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: This force is reasonable demand.

Demand on the country, the citizen, the individual, the society, or the world in which they all exist must remain reasonable should reason be applicable to decisions regarding demands. Unreasonable demands lead only to unreasonable responses, most often a retaliation against the very structure that seeks the initial demand. When demand is unreasonable in scientific fields, such as the demand that a hypothesis be of the same merit as a theory, the demand can be refuted along the grounds of its request for such special pleading. However, when demand is unreasonable in fields that are less prone to employ scientific rationale (as such in politics or religion) and especially prone to decide the public perspective of our personal morality, then the rationally minded must opt out of the demand and instead embrace their personal morality. The threats to this ideology, the abandonment of dogmatic morals adherent to authoritative whim, lie within—to name only two—the bosom of Kantian maxims and Islamic attempts at controlling human rights.

Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Practical Reason, uses the term “maxim” to describe an action or precept that an individual takes with respect to a belief of its righteousness. The actual righteousness of the belief can be measured by gauging its effectiveness as a universal standard of conduct. “I am never to act otherwise[the universal conformity of the will's actions to law] than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” This stalwart defense against the injustice of a universally inapplicable standard is further reinforced by Kant's claim that he doesn't “need any far-reaching penetration to discern what [he has] to do in order that [his] will may be morally good”; the very action of his interrogation of his will by comparing it to an applicable universal law—when his will produces a universally applicable law—justifies his will as good, and therefore his will is “above everything”.

While this ideology sounds wonderful on paper, that the good intent of a person can be somewhat salvaged and morphed into a universal law for the rest of humanity to follow into a rational and just future, it is ultimately impossible to put into practice—let alone convince others to adhere to the new universal laws. Kant addressed the criticism of lying, and how prudent lies can be beneficial to the individual. His answer to the question “May I when in distress make a promise with the intention not to keep it?” was simply to suggest that the maxim for the affirmative, an intentionally neglected promise, would be universally inapplicable—that it would be opposite of the negative maxim: The adherence to the strict rule that lying is merely a means to the end of personal reward, and that it is not in itself a representation of good will and therefore not good. This is not to suggest that an individual is never able to make a decision that is unable to be applied universally as law, but merely that such actions are not suited to be made into such. The impossibility of this continued address of personal maxims is due to the vast amounts of exceptions to various universal laws: Any argument with the presentation of either precisely following a universal law or foregoing adherence to the rule to save the lives of others; an ultimate and highly hypothetical presentation would be to weigh the vindication of adherence against the existence of the tested individual's entire species—it would be an interesting, albeit morbid, thought experiment.

Adherence to universal law is also discussed in the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI).

“Believing that fundamental rights and universal freedoms in Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion and that no one as a matter of principle has the right to suspend them in whole or in part or violate or ignore them in as much as they are binding divine commandments. . . every person is individually responsible — and the Ummah collectively responsible — for their safeguard.”

These fundamental rights include the freedom from servitude to all but the Islamic deity, life being a divine gift and therefore protected, equal dignity between genders, and prohibitions against racism. While sounding all well and good, this declaration is actually very much unable to provide for those who would use it to promote freedom of or from religion. The declaration renders all of its own articles moot by the reference to Sharia as the immutable source of, and ultimate authority on, any issue with the declaration, thereby making the declaration variable based solely on the changeable nature of seventh century texts—that is to say very unlikely, given the reluctance to adapt the Koran, Torah, or Bible for modern times.

However, with the CDHRI, adherence to its rendition of universal law is rather unreasonable. First, it requires that for equal rights to be realized, that the individual must be of the Islamic faith, all other faiths being inadequate to receive the divine providence of equal rights. Secondly, it requires unfaltering belief from the individual of the declaration's righteousness, as any questioning of its articles would be a direct question of Sharia law, and thereby punishable within the law with “death or enslavement” for non-Muslims (Arlandson); Muslims are only offered the former punishment. This ultimate law is far from the ideal that Kant would hold, far from being followed to harness and develop a good will.

These unreasonable demands of both of Kant and the Islamic Conference—although hardly bearable a comparison—are the reasons for their criticisms and their individual maladies should they be fully implemented: Kant's ideology leading to paralysis of decision, given that no maxim can become universal law with the amount of continually accounted-for exceptions, and Islamic Sharia law leading to an enslavement of human reason, the epitome of unreasonable consequences of dogmatic doctrine.

lots of green

Ahh, the perk of being a member? /shrug

/win

Posting in a serious Biral thread. oh and TLDR.

So, anyone have any feedback on this piece, positive or otherwise?

/whimper

Sure:

Shut up hippie.