Biden's Victory Speech

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I know what I said. Under the definition you provided, yes, it was pragmatic. What I want to know is if you think it was 'decent and wise'.

Try to think of it like this: Per your definition, pragmatism may be thought of as the plan most likely to lead to the achievement of a particular goal. I'm trying to get you to understand that if the goal is an horrific one, pragmatism cannot be either decent or wise.

Yeah, I thought this is what pragmatic meant too -- and pragmatism in pursuit of an evil goal is still evil.

However, no dictionary agrees with me.  Pragmatism is supposed to be reasonable, logical and pertain to the practical and not the ideological or theoretical.  That means it cannot be in pursuit of some ideological ideal.

But, if pragmatism is supposed to be reasonable, how do you determine what is "reasonable" without an underlying set of principles or values?


I think dictionaries are extremely off-base here.

The most practical way for Hitler to rid Europe of undesirables was to kill them on the spot. Given the choice between that or paying to ship them out, Hitler chose the (to him) reasonable and pragmatic course.

To be clear - although this is something I shouldn’t  need to emphasize - this is NOT a defense of the Final Solution. It is, as I said earlier, an extreme example meant to show that a pragmatic course of action is not necessarily ‘decent and wise’.

To return to our muttons, I pointed out that the Taliban assisted in the evacuation in the hope of attracting foreign investment, which would allow them to fund future terrorist operations. Winter, without referring or objecting to the ‘terrorism’ bit, said that this course of action was decent and wise.

Boru