no particular results

"the pragmatic method, in such cases, is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective pratical consequences...it stands for no particular results, it has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its methods." william james. pragmatism. 1907____________________________ "we do not intend to lecture contries on their internal structure, either in cases like the phillipines at present, or the communist countries. our concern is for foreign policy behavior and we will aid dictatorships if it is in our interest to do so." richard nixon to u n ambassador john scali 13 february 1973__________ just a short tangent before i get to my point dick...we need to have a heart to heart about north viet nam and cambodia and your "foreign policy behavior" towards their "internal structure" during your first term in office...i sense something of a conflict there...been at the gin again? and so the quintesential american philosophy, " if it works towards achieving your 'goals-in-view' then it's an ethical good"...a wholly situational ethic that, as old dick's views on "dictatorships" show, entails no permanent friends, no permanenet enemies ( why you can buy clothes made in viet nam ), only permanent interests ( why you can be a good consumer and buy aforementioned clothes )...so manuel noriega can go from a good friend to a federal prison when he got greedy about drugs...or saddam hussein can go from being a saunch ally fighting a proxy war against the evil iranians to a hanged guy when he got greedy about kuwaiti oil...they both trangressed those "permanent interests" and paid the empire's price...dick was a politican and so had a professional need to lie through this teeth about almost everything...james considered himself an educator and philosopher of sorts...he died in 1910 i believe...before the first world war, much less the rest of that miserable century...i have to wonder what he might ( or might not ) recant in this if he had made it to mid century...situational ethics and "goals-in-view" can have some unpalatable consequences...i suppose that interpretation would have a lot to do with your definiton of "practical".