What is a liberal?

You give him too much. Communism is about freedom? No it isn't. You aren't free to earn what you want or be in the field you want. You have to have permission for everything. It is the antithesis of freedom. It is the exchange of economic freedom for economic security.

 

We have private schools yes, but the system doesn't work perfectly. It's a debate over it, and it definitively needs to be looked at. I don't know the system though, but if I know my Sweden right, the current swedish system isn't what the right means by vouchers.

Communism is about freedom. Ridiculously much freedom in fact. Note that I'm not talking about stalinism now, which strictly speaking isn't communism. See, communism is a state/condition of a society, and in communism there wouldn't be any classes, money, nations, borders, countries, states et cetera. And everyone would be equal, because technology would allow for such a surplus as to make it pointless to hoard, and because humans would have evolved to be capable of of perfect empathy.

As you are a rightist, this sounds wierd by your definition of freedom, which is to be free from coercion: that all actions are voluntary. Indeed, but communism goes by another definition of freedom, and in addition to the above, they believe that people cannot truly be free if they aren't equal. The view classes impose restrictions on people, and so do countries, and so do money et cetera, and if one gets rid of those, man can be free.

That is what communism is, and stalinism is but one of many ways to reach (try rather, and failing guaranteed) communism. Other ways are trostkyism and maoism for example. Stalinism believes there need be a state in order to pave way for communism, whilst others see that as contra-productive. Again, what we got in the USSR isn't what communists seek at all, for they seek the freedom described earlier. That they are naive and that most attempts to reach communism ends with hell, is irrelevant.

 

We could play website tennis if you like. But what you really should do is post a clip from a liberal radio show or TV broadcast or any media that offers this kind of insanity. Show me something equivalent from a liberal. This garbage was not only booked as a guest on right wing radio, a Tea Party member and the talk show host, are giving it serious consideration. I'd like to know what kind of hate would consume a person to the extent that he's willing to float conspiracy theories about aliens and the President making a deal with Canada to suppress an insurrection of "true Patriots" not to mention Nuking the US to put money into the pocket of George Soros. Give me something equivalent. Can you do that? This kind of fringe mentality has a way of working itself into right wing talking points of revolution, secession, birtherism, Obama is a secret Muslim, when the truth is that they simply can't accept that he ever got elected in the first place and lives in the "WHITE House".

This is what is called a Red Herring. The red herring is as much a debate tactic as it is a logical fallacy. It is a fallacy of distraction, and is committed when a listener attempts to divert an arguer from his argument by introducing another topic. Bravo. How transparent of you. So you employ a Red Herring through accusations that I and other liberals want to "take by force, and tell what to do". And I suppose that this kind of thinking on your part, justifies the loony remarks by the conservative crack-pot? Aren't you going to defend your nutjob right wing compatriot??

 

So I can do what I want with no consequences from obamacare now? Or I am forced to follow or face jail time? Can I opt out of Medicare? Social security? What programs do you have that are about choice? Certainly not education.

Here you go, while I disagree with your premise that Eric rush is mainstream anything, here is Toure, Truther sometimes and msnbc anchor:

http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/scot...-and-911-truther-toure-denies-hes-911-truther

- - - Updated - - -

So I can do what I want with no consequences from obamacare now? Or I am forced to follow or face jail time? Can I opt out of Medicare? Social security? What programs do you have that are about choice? Certainly not education.

Here you go, while I disagree with your premise that Eric rush is mainstream anything, here is Toure, Truther sometimes and msnbc anchor:

http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2013/09/11/msnbc-anchor-and-911-truther-toure-denies-hes-911-truther

 

Excellent reply, at least someone here knows what the truth is... good post

 

The text would be too long, so I had to remove much of your text to fit mine. I deleted at random, so don't mind that the quoted post don't make sense. I just kept enough for you to see what I was replying to.

As I've said, choosing the options one thinks leads to the best results (subjectively defined of course) despite that action sometimes going against one's gut feeling, is a set of morals in its own right. It is indeed a calculation, but it's based on what all other morality is based on also, and the calculation's input is one's subjective understanding of right and wrong, and one's understanding of the world. I would argue that it does see every person as a ends in themselves, but merely that it's an attempt to optimize to goodness of one's actions, by a calculation. Choosing to do an action knowing that there is a less intuitive alternative that will lead to greater good, isn't moral in my view.

Also, I'm not defending selfishness as moral, I'm just saying that selfishness if put in the right system can lead to good. Essentially, I was reasoning as Smith that public good can come out of selfish behavior.

Basically, but I'll add this quote: "there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure… In my opinion human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula ‘Maximize pleasure’ is that it assumes a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one man’s pain by another man’s pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all..."

By Karl Popper. A slight modification which means that the principle is minimize pain rather than maximize pleasure.

I too, am an atheist. And yes, Jesus' teaching weren't about self-interest.

Again, I'm not saying it's moral, I'm saying it works. What I mean is that rather than relying on our faulty nature to provide 'good' results, it's better to have systems which make our self-interests serve the public good, like a free market. Again, it's the Smithian argument.

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other eases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

But my end is the good of all? If that's the end, the means are (to an extent) justified. Let us do evil, so that good may come. If faced with two alternatives, and one is to not act and then there'll be evil, and the other is to do a little evil and then comes much good, the moral thing to do is the latter.

A thug I would be if self-interest was my end, but that's not the case as I've already said. No, I'm not advocating social Darwinism at all. Welfare is justified by the principles above, as is government. To tax, is to threaten innocents with force: It is to initiate aggression with the aim of taking their wealth. That is bad, but it is justified because that wealth can be used to provide for a government and welfare, which will lead to less evil and more good. My position is thus the very opposite of social Darwinism.

I define the greater good as the happiness of everyone. and come on, you agree with this unless you're an anarchist.

There could be better examples, but you got my point didn't you?

No, I include myself. I know that I'm faulty, faulty as anybody else as limited in potential and as prone to error. My whole position is based on that I realize that my individual intellect, and me, with all my flaws and my limited experience, cannot possible trump the collective intellect and experience of a whole people. I am not proposing systems that I have devised, but I am referring to the systems and institutions which have been formed by our collective intellect and which have proven themselves to work. I am saying we should have our presumptions in favor of these systems.


It's not foundationalist at all. It's based on the acknowledgement that we don't know everything and that when individuals reason out new institutions from a set of first principles, they will rarely best an institution that has grown from the collective intellect. Institutions based on the collective human intellect, experience, and wisdom of many generations are more reliable.

I'd agree with Popper. It's of course my subjective understand of what good is, but I believe freedom is good. Were a planned economy to be superior in terms of producing wealth, I still wouldn't go for it if it cost us all of our liberty. But the opposite -liberty and poverty- wouldn't really be much better either. It's a balance. Liberty, without which wealth cannot be enjoyed, wealth without which liberty isn't really that great.

In the sense that morals are disconnected from empiricism, and thus are really just floating around without anything to be anchored to except our subjectivity, I'm a moral relativist. It's about realizing that our set of right and wrong do not have anything to do with the world per se, but with our understanding of it. They are not absolute, they are illogical and contradictionary et cetera. I know that what I view as right is ultimately just the result of evolution, and that right and wrong doesn't have any real place in the unvierse, but only with humans. Since humans themselves are what morality is based upon, every set of morality is as valid. This is nihilism isn't?

But, even though I realise that my own set of morals rest on the same blurry foundation as everyone else's, that doesn't mean I won't live by them. I embrace my morals despite knowing they aren't grounded in anything, because I feel I must live something. I don't care that morals don't exist, or that feelings and minds are just chemical reactions and electric connections. That's reality, but I feel no need to abandon the human experience just because I realise it's based on nothing.

oh I wandered off there. To answer your question, I think freedom is good and slavery is bad, but I'm still a nihilist about morals. I just choose to embrace them anyways.

I didn't come up with it, I borrowed the thought from Edmund Burke and Thomas Sowell. The US was founded on that assumption of man. That's why the constitution so clearly lies out a limited government, and a separation of powers. They are really going with Burke's thoughts about rights being about constraining others. This is very clear in comparison to the French revolution over the Atlantic, which was largely driven by the assumption that the nature of man is malleable. There was no limitations on government there, for why would there be? And how they tried to remake society into a utopia: the godless cult of reason, the new calendars, the reign of terror to root out all evil so that they could begin anew. This revolution was guided by reason, even though it was flawed. The US was too, but the reasoning was based on a different perception of man. In the US, they didn't try to create a new man, for they based their system on the assumption that man was flawed and destined to forever be so.

As I've said, I share Machiavelli's view of the world and of man, but that's doesn't mean my goal is myself. I think I've explained much of this already.

The point I was making is that if freedom requires a 'self', and a self is just our mind -a set of atoms really- that owe their position and history due to a preceding event. Everything which constitutes 'you' is the result of a previous happening, as is every decision you'd make. There cannot exist a 'self' that is independent from the things that have happened earlier. Free will thus doesn't exist, because you are merely acting as any other set of atoms would if given the exact same circumstances. For isn't that really what freedom is, what choice is? To be presented with the exact same scenario twice, and be able to pick different choices? But you can't do that, because everything is already determined by what happened before.

This is merely how I understand the world. It's not an attempt to absolve myself from any responsibility, nor is it an appeal to authority. To say that I would act in response to authority, as if I had the option not to, would be to say that I even had the choice of not complying, that I had true free will. I am saying that free will doesn't exist to begin with. I don't even have the choice to act as a means, and even if I 'choose' to act "by the law that I give myself" that law is still the product of preceding events. Understand my reasoning?

Again, just because I view the world as being so, doesn't mean that I totally give up on the world and won't try to pursue happiness. Because, I know that my whole being is the result of the past, and that any action I choose to take is the result of the past. Oddly enough, that kind of gives me the freedom to interpret what the result of the past will be.. by god, this is really interesting thoughts btw!

Indeed, and likewise. Sorry for delaying the reply for so long, but these posts really do take some time to compose and I need a few hours for it.

 

It's a calculation, but the input isn't scientific or empirical, but my own subjective morality. Calculations are very much a part of morality. Say you have an apple and you want to do good with it. You are not hungry, and there's a starving child next to you. To deem it more moral to give the apple to the child is a calculation, thus morality can be calculated even if the input and output hasn't got any relation to science or empiricism.

You can't? It's easy. If I operate in a system where I need to provide you with a service in order to further my own self-interest, that system makes my self-interest work towards to public good. As Smith said: it's not because of the baker's benevolence or charity that we get our bread but because of his self-interest. Don't confuse the public good, which is the average wellbeing of society, with morality. I am not saying that it's a moral system, I'm saying that it gives a good result. Wheter we are unfree in the sense that we are slaves to our impulses is irrelevant to this point.

Popper seems very reasonable. The big questions regarding politics is actually how to negate the nastier sides of our nature whilst amplifying the better.

for the people. People have food, shelter and clothes. That these were provided for them by people acting out of their self-interests matters not.

To clear out a misunderstanding: I've never said that acting out of self-interest is what we should strive to do, or that it's the moral and right thing to do. I'm merely saying that for the most part, that's inevitably what humans will do, and that the questions then is, 'how do we best make their self-interest work towards the good of all'?

I agree with you that lives are what matters, and thus I'm probably not a adherent of economism. Nay, it's exactly because lives matter that I'm supportive of, with the threat of force, taking money from some and giving it to others. The very moral and philosophical justification for a welfare state is actually this very Machiavellian line 'that the end justifies the means'. The steal is evil, but to make peoples' lives better, is good, and thus the former is justified by the latter. This is what I mean by that I'm Machiavellian.

My end is the good of all, as I define it. That's of course not necessarily in accordance to what you might view as in your interest, or what you view as the good of all. As I've said, it's all subjective like all morals are. I cannot base my moral positions on anything but themselves, thus I need not really justify them, making all these questions meaningless. The same dilemma applies to whatever you'd do because you think it's just. How can we really know it is just? We can't, for neither of us. But just because there isn't really any solid basis for our moral judgements, doesn't mean we shouldn't act upon them. What else could we do anyways? We don't have any tools with which to reach any kinds of moral truths, so we can only act upon our subjective morality.

Oh, I didn't say my self interest is the interest of all. I said my goal is the public good. different things. See above.

I agree with that.

I like to think that's the case, hehe..

The problem isn't with thinking outside the box or trying new things. It's rather than some ideas cannot be empirically proven. It's basically that empiricism trumps rationalism. it's all good when it comes to Einstein, which could have his ideas proven empirically, and it's all good for all other cases where that is so. But the danger is in those fields where one's ideas are not and cannot be subjected to empirical testing in any meaningful way. Typically, large scale social engineering falls into this category. In the 20th century, every crazy dictator had their fan base of intellectuals who had rationalised up some ideas which supported them. The problem is that those ideas cannot be proven right or wrong without subjecting a whole society, which is way too costly. Thus, this burkean notion of collective intelligence doesn't really apply to such fields as physics.

It's not about orthodoxy or appeal to tradition per se, but the danger with the lack of empirical trial -as explained above- and the simple calculation, based on our fallibility, that our collective intelligence is likely much higher. This very position rests on that experts can indeed be wrong, which is why we should be very skeptical of letting their rationalized solutions, which can't be empirically tested, alter our replace our current trade-off systems.

Oh, I must have misread. See, due to being a non-native speaker and because I haven't taken any courses in philosophy, I'm not terribly well-versed in all these fancy words so I kind of guess by context sometimes.

What I meant is that it does have a foundation. Namely the assuption of a flawed human nature. It doesn't, as I believe you said, just float around with a foundation.

What can we do, that doesn't ultimately stem from some kind of desire? Just as you have a desire to drink, you have a desire to do good by charity perhaps. Whatever you want to do, is a desire to do something, which exists there not because you chose it to, but because of circumstances beyond your control. All of your possible goals, are all desires, which are determined by happenings outside of your control, and thus you are forever bound. A commercial pleading you to send aid to africa.. Isn't that just appealing to your inherent desire to do well? and that desire is just as inherent to you as your need to drink, and just as much beyond your control? This applies to everything you might want to do. The desire to write on PF, to see something beautiful, to kiss, to hate, to love, to think.. anything. Are we truly free if everything we have to choose from has been determined by something else?

A balance. By wealth I mean anything that we value. Without no wealth you are free to do whatever you wish but you have nothing that you value. Of course there must be a balance. I don't know where that balance is, but I know that humans are most happy when they have things that they value, and are free to enjoy them.

I'm not a moral relativist in that I consider all morals to be equally morally valid. I merely considered them to be equally justified, and I act according to my won morality, conscious of its lack of foundation.

Beware though, since all process with which you try to weed out falsehood and error are themselves based upon a fallible source: you. I wouldn't even be so sure to say we have the ability to discern what is false and not. To some extent we do of course, but we are faulty.

Oh, so do I. I didn't say that I defend my morals irrationally. They are up for scrutiny and debate. I was merely saying that just because they're all grounded in nothing doesn't mean that I don't stand for anything. What I stand for, can change, if I'm given sufficient convincing reason. I too, seek the truth.

Don't think of it in terms of government and governed, but simply people. The government are people too, and they are restrained. Both the government, and the governed, are restrained.

Point being that the american and french revolutions were largely based upon two very different views of human nature.

The ideology isn't based on self-interest, it's merely acknowledging the existence of it and analyses it with the aim of utilizing it for the betterment of all.

No, it's determinism. it's the position that for every event there exists conditions that could have caused no other event.

a pleasure, as always.

 

nvm...

 

"You liberals" is just a blanket statement typically used to separate 'US' and 'THEM'. 'Liberals' to it too, but it's literally a synonym for the Democratic party. That's all it is. The 'blue guys'.

 

Coming from Australia, it's difficult for me to get my head around the American slant on liberal.

Daddy Liberal Abbott with his henchman.

 

Im in OZ and have no trouble

(left) Commis, socialist, collectivists <----------- ----------------> Liberty (right)

Of course both major parties (of both countries) are somewhere in the middle with Labor and US Dems leading the charge to the left.

Once you understand that its easy, US liberalism is not liberty. FTR i dont condone corporatism which all of the above parties do. But at least Abbott put a levy on the largest companies to pay for the paid parental leave scheme. Id make it higher, a sliding tax scale on companies allowing for a more competitive market and flat NiT for people.