[15437] in APO-L
Re: Promises
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joseph M. Fisher)
Sun Nov 10 22:32:21 1996
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 22:32:02 -0800
Reply-To: "Joseph M. Fisher" <jfisher@RacerX.mse.jhu.edu>
From: "Joseph M. Fisher" <jfisher@RacerX.mse.jhu.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <9611110045.AA23236@RacerX.mse.jhu.edu>
The Italian Stallion wrote:
> You should be a politician. Part of our duty as brothers is to keep the
> promises made by the previous generation. True, sometimes they need
> to be broken, but this IS NOT one of those times.
I'm flattered. I thought I was possibly among the honey-tongued... but
never the fork-tongued!! Tell me, if I am a politician, then why am I
espousing what is quite possibly the minority view? And why am I standing
so firm? Brother Clinton and company are to be found among the shadows,
not on clear ground. I'm not playing with words. I mean it.
> Destroying another groups way of life that doesn't interfere with
> yours is just plain mean and rude!
OK, random editorial comment: the Taliban (wacko ultra-fundamentalist
Muslims in Afghanistan) don't interfere with my life either, and that
won't stop me from sending them nasty letters on behalf of Amnesty,
pointing out how the Koran says they're freaks.
Back to APO: We all pledged to join this brotherhood knowing that we were
bound to promote a certain *right* way of life, summarized in the
principles of LFS and based on the principles of the Boy Scouts (but we're
not talking about that right now). Anyway... I think that anyone on my
side of the question will agree that we frankly don't see how a group that
excludes women can ultimately be committed above all else to LFS.
And moreover, given that college students are supposedly mature,
well-socialized people, we don't see how the opposite sex is going to
destroy anything.
Alex Kohr wrote:
> If a company/Organization makes the Agreement/promise to do something
> and then the new people running the company decide to no longer uphold
> the agreement the company. they will be sued and will lose to the people
Unless of course the contract isn't written down, in which case a bunch
of lawyers get paid big bucks to go down to the tennis court and work out
a settlement. For the kind of organization that we are, the only thing
comparable to a contract is a bylaw or a resolution, which in this case we
don't have. So we have to go down to the hotel ballroom and work it out.
Anyway we are hard to compare to a company... the latter despite
leadership and ownership changes remains at all times a strictly
quantifiable value. That is ultimately how and why a company is held
responsible for its contracts. A government is a better analogy...
but you might note that countries do not always keep promises - for
reasons good and bad. (If it involves the present Chinese government,
it's probably bad.)
One of the good reasons is that all governments and organizations operate
under certain rules, similar to those written down by someone named
Roberts (maybe the dread pirate even!). These rules exist to preserve the
ability of the organization to govern itself. And it is antithetical to
all rules of logic and procedure for a body to prohibit itself from taking
a future action (provided that the action is procedurally legitimate).
In other words, we couldn't write a BYLAW preventing a coed requirement
even if we wanted to! Making an agreement like that goes against the
most universal principles we are united under.
-- Cyrano
