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Notes -
I'm directly arguing against that point. Also, I know I'm carelessly trampling all over hundreds of years of vigorously debated philosophy, and this is a massive tangent, but it seems to be a big part of hiynka's issue with blue-tribers.
What is working hard, and what is being a good father? These ideas are derived from attempts to benefit society or one's kin, or accomplish greatness, or something. If one looks at someone clicking away at league of legends, even if they're trying very hard to click, or someone who's working very hard at applying makeup properly to attract a mate - this isn't "hard work", because it's not benefitting society or yourself. Playing league or doing makeup well are somewhat mechanically challenging, take patience and knowledge, and aren't obviously less so than working as a janitor. The only thing that really distinguishes someone 'hard at work' on a tough, soft task like writing, from someone lazily arguing on the internet, are the usefulness, or interestingness, of the output! Same goes for 'being a good father' - what makes a "good father" still requires the """consequentialist""" judgement of what actually benefits the child! If a father, to benefit their child, feeds them bleach to "clean out parasites" ... are they being a good father? No. Replace bleach with ivermectin, assuming the right kind of parasite, and yes. Similarly if instead of bleach, it's 1700 and the child is fed some poisonous healing brew that isn't "obviously bad" in society's eyes. Saying these particular categories are "valuable in and of themselves" still makes most of the same consequentialist value judgements, with all the latent complexity, just hidden behind socially-claimed sanction.
The idea is - i think - if you care about consequences over 'process', then you become corrupted by power / unrestrained / an evil leftist, and therefore, the argument goes, forget about the actual good things - i.e. consequentialistly pursuing "lots of good people" turns you into the progressive EA who forgets about his children and community. And to avoid this, we'll say "there are Goods - real moral actions you need to follow, that you can't reason around"! The problem is this still posits various ... good things, that are, purely observationally, justified by their consequences (your children and family are unhappy, your society collapses from deracination and lack of purpose), which are the 'principles you need to stick to' - but the complexity of causation means you can lose those goods too! The person 'sticking to their principles' is doing so because they're arguing those principles do maintain the children and family and society in a way the consequentialist doesn't, and that the progressive consequentialist, by abandoning them, gets confused or corrupted by power and forgets what's good - the issue is that saying 'there is a Good' doesn't make the goals of said 'Goods' go away - the children and society still physically exist, it's still worth actually helping your child, and when that conflicts with your list-of-virtuous-actions and you follow the Virtuous Action and your child learns less or your society collapses, nothing was gained! And progressives aren't failing because they forgot to follow the restrained-list-of-goods and were too rational, it's because they genuinely believe different values are Good and follow those!
But those principles are clearly and obviously there to achieve certain ends! If you follow your principle of "working hard" but your hard work is as an accountant in the Progressive Eugenics Department - or what if you're a subcontractor, and you just work at Ernst & Ernst, you just happen to notice you're doing accounting for the PED - or you are a "good father" in that you indoctrinate your child into the Blue Tribe, like the rest of your community does ... and how can you even know this isn't "working hard" or "being a good father" without tracing out the physical consequences of those actions?
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