| | Joe, that was an excellent post. I like Bill Whittles Video, but it is as flawed as his claim that human nature if flawed and I enjoyed how well you picked that apart.
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Bill Whittle, in the video, says, "We don't believe that human nature can change. We don't think that people are perfectable. ... We believe that people are motivated primarily by their own self-interests. Some people see this view that we have that human nature is fundamentally flawed and selfish and essentially unchangable as cynical and pessimistic. On the contrary it is this belief that generates the checks and balances against the natural human bastardliness that otherwise wants to tell other people what to do. These checks and balances prevent the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few people..." He goes on to say that it is the big government people that believe that human beings are perfectable and that if government does enough it can perfect them. He claims that states sought perfection through equality of income, through providing education, or by killing everyone that is wrong. He says, "People aren't perfect and they aren't perfectable. We in the Tea Party value the constitution because it limits the power of the people that go into government because they crave power over others and we perfer business over government because if you don't like the way a business treats you, you can go to another business. You don't like the service the government provides you don't get to go to another government people."
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Perfectibility
It started as a philosophical question and it addressed the issue of man's relation to an ideal state where one was in harmony with nature, with reason, with human nature. This theorized state was determined by reason and measured by reason and could be attained by anyone. "Living according to reason and virtue, the Stoics held, is to live in harmony with the divine order of the universe..."
Then it became a theological issue and like angeles dancing on the head of a pin it achieved the status of meaninglessness. Instead of nature as understood by reason and logic, it became harmony with God as determined by faith and scripture. It remains today an issue with various religions. Is only God perfect and man must always be imperfect no matter what he strives to do? Does God give Grace to those who desire and strive for perfection? More ways to construe guilt and ladle out humility or devise impossible goals.
After the dark ages 'perfectibility' came back to life with those who held that man was closest to perfect when he was closest to nature. But they didn't mean nature as in the properties of an entity, i.e., human nature or the nature of the universe. No, they meant go back to the wilderness or to being a hunter-gatherer. They meant that strange version of nature as meaning all that exists that has not been changed by or belonging to man. An anti-civilization, anti-reason point of view. This was a claim that reason and logic tells us to abandon reason and logic and science and technology and return to 'nature.'
Then came a variation on that view - a different interpretation altogether which said that the use of reason enabled man to better observe natures laws and that perfection was in that direction. This was just history coming around to where the Greeks began.
If perfectability is totally impossible, it is a denial of free will. Certainly if we have some degree of free will we can effect changes - including in moving towards ideals. At that point it becomes a matter of defining the ideals. On the other hand, if human nature were flawed, and unperfectable, then how could any political system help or matter? The Christians and the Conservatives both have held with a degree of free will, yet they both refute it as well. The Christians tell people to choose good over evil which presume the ability to do so. Yet the claim that all is Gods will, leaving no room for man's will. The conservatives claim that individuals must take personal responsibility and uphold the values of free enterprise, both positions imply a degree of free will. Yet their philosophy holds that man is flawed and the purpose of government is to restrict power. How is it possible to create a good goverment if there are no good people? How does one get rid of their flaws long enough to create this good govermment, and stay away from the flaws so as to preserve it? They don't answer that.
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If there were to be any merit to a discussion of perfectibility (and I'm not sure there ever would be), it will arise out of the what purpose perfectibility would serve for an individual, for his own self-interest and not for duty to society or God. Just as Objectivists know that the purpose of government is the protection of the individual's rights.
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