First off, I'm still doing a brief survey of ancient political philosophy over the issue of foreign relations, specifically the morality of a ruling power declaring war only so as to keep power. To be frank, there aren't many ancient sources that address foreign relations, let alone of consists moral foreign relations. It would seem that most ancient philosophers simply took a state of war for granted. At best, you've got poets and historians noting the tragic consequences of various foreign relation debacles (the Trojan War, the Peloponnesian War) but no philosophers or politicians directly address the need for foreign relations until Machiavelli and his heirs in the modern age.

What you've got instead is, for the most part, a concern the flows from the distinction between the public good of the city/state and the private good of the ruler. (Exceptions to this exist such as a few ancient sources that promote something akin to social contract theory and Thrasymuchus' position of ``might makes right'' in Plato's Republic, but they are a minority.)  Given that war was virtually inevitable (and for some, such as Aristotle, necessary for human completeness) the question of war being moral never really crops up except in the form is this war being waged for the good of the entire people or for the private purposes of the ruler.

Which leads to the question of whether its moral for a ruler (or ruling party) to wage war as means of retaining power. The ancients would reduce this question to whether or not it is for the common good for the ruler (or ruling party) to remain in power. Is the ruler violating the law by staying in power? Is the war bringing more harm than good to the city? If the results are good for the commonweal, then it would seem to follow that even if the ruler (or rulers) lied to start the war, that the war is ``just''.

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My ISP tech support rocks. I emailed them on Saturday over my Linksys combination WAP/router. I figured I wouldn't get a response until Monday. I didn't. The response was great. It ran along the lines of ``we don't support this and won't help you out, but you might try doing x, y, and z.'' As it would turn out, x was the problem as coryking pointed out to me. Now, I've got free reign of the house with my iBook so I can sprawl out flat on my back with my iBook on my stomach to do my various homework assignments.

Speaking of homework assignments, thus far I'm very much unimpressed with the junior college that I'm taking night classes at. This will be the fourth college and second two year tech school that I've attended. Thus far, it is absolute pants compared to the other schools I've attended which is a pretty fair trick considering some of the bad schools that I've attended.

On the bright side, my eMarketing class is finally getting to some interesting stuff such as how to figure cost per visitor and cost per acquired customer, how to keep track of various online ad compaigns, and the like.

And best of all, between the two classes I ought to be pumping up my GPA.

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I spent about fifteen minutes this evening browsing through the graduation rates for the men's basketball programs for the teams that made the NCAA division I tourney. I'm floored. I expected some to have bad rates. I didn't expect so many to have rates in the thirties and below. I guess the kids going to those schools on basketball scholarships are banking on going pro rather than getting an education.

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That is all.