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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
KwarK
United States43279 Posts
On November 26 2013 05:38 sam!zdat wrote: "get the people right" doesn't sound like freedom to me Freedom is overrated anyway. But what I meant is that countries like Nazi Germany which got the people wrong were not about to be restrained by a constitution. You need a people who believe more or less in what the constitution says for it to have any meaning, if the people are shitty then a good constitution won't help. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7921 Posts
On November 26 2013 05:40 KwarK wrote: Freedom is overrated anyway. But what I meant is that countries like Nazi Germany which got the people wrong were not about to be restrained by a constitution. You need a people who believe more or less in what the constitution says for it to have any meaning, if the people are shitty then a good constitution won't help. "Freedom is overrated", thanks for that deep statement. What does that even mean? | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On November 26 2013 05:02 farvacola wrote: Here you go again with the massive question begging Jonny. Do I really need to describe the reasons why MA is an outlier in many regards, or are you really just taking the piss? In fact, MA, along with NoVA and the DC area, would be a great place to start looking at how successes in some states can be expanded and applied to others, even when their religious tribalism resists all outside influence. Successes in some areas aren't necessarily compatible in other areas. A system that works well in Massachusetts could be incompatible with the governmental systems, labor markets and cultural preferences down in Mississippi. My question to you is how you work around that. Otherwise I'm doubtful of the national plan. | ||
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KwarK
United States43279 Posts
On November 26 2013 06:26 Biff The Understudy wrote: "Freedom is overrated", thanks for that deep statement. What does that even mean? I mean the vast majority of potential freedoms could be done away with without making society significantly worse. Many can be done away with making society better. | ||
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ZeaL.
United States5955 Posts
On November 26 2013 05:02 farvacola wrote: Here you go again with the massive question begging Jonny. Do I really need to describe the reasons why MA is an outlier in many regards, or are you really just taking the piss? In fact, MA, along with NoVA and the DC area, would be a great place to start looking at how successes in some states can be expanded and applied to others, even when their religious tribalism resists all outside influence. I dunno, one could argue that it is because states are allowed to experiment you can get states that do well and states that do poorly. On the other hand, national reform has the ability to lift all states or seriously mess everybody up. I mean, look at the impact Texas' state board of education is having on the textbook industry. Now imagine Rick Perry as president who needs to fill a spot for secretary of education, now with far more influence. Yeeeeahhhh. But you're also right in that there has to be some limits to what states can do... it seems that states like TN and MS, left to their own devices, are going to just keep going down. IMO, the ideal balance would be to let states do their own thing, reward states that do well, and implement things that successful states do in other states on a federal level. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7921 Posts
On November 26 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote: I mean the vast majority of potential freedoms could be done away with without making society significantly worse. Many can be done away with making society better. Well, I guess we would have to start by giving a definition of freedom, otherwise your sentence doesn't make any sense. That actually reminds me of that old post: On February 21 1848 16:55 Karl Marx wrote: The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. | ||
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
Edit : plus living right next to a country ravaged by civil war sounds awesome. Edit : just like central bank have an inflation target, governments should have a population influx target. That would teach them ! | ||
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stroggozzz
New Zealand81 Posts
I think everyone here knows what the definition of freedom here is, so no need to go into that. As for knowing weather a society is better or worse-if we are talking about weather its a good place to live or not, well that's just something that takes common sense, if you look at norway then somalia, i think most people would choose to live in norway. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century. And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. | ||
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KwarK
United States43279 Posts
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote: I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. anything to make the world less morally confusing | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote: The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say: A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Are you agreeing with what you wrote, or are you expanding on Moltke's in my opinion quite mistaken understanding of Kwark's position ? | ||
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Tula
Austria1544 Posts
On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote: I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote: The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say: A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote: And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On November 26 2013 04:59 mcc wrote: I don't believe the government should be "unlimited" (whatever that exactly means). I am saying that the limits are decided by popular opinion whether you like it or not. If people in US wanted to dismantle the constitution there is nothing to prevent it. If they wanted to deny some groups basic human rights, there is again nothing to prevent it. The trick to make government to do good things instead of evil is to have societal culture in place that makes most people to see what are good and what are bad things. That is what made your government operate within constitutional boundaries for so long. The trick to make government do good things instead of dumb things is to have again proper culture in place and population educated enough to know the difference at least to some degree. Dismantling by constitutional amendment, by legislation, by coordination between the executive and legislative, that I can agree with you. Nowadays, its being force-fed turpentine and being told, "It's good for you!" Protesting to the contrary every direct aim of legislation, claiming constitutionality in all things running directly against established constitutional precedent. Writing laws with the force of laws, then using selective enforcement to enforce lawlessness. Much different than overturning laws, amending the constitution, and legislating in good faith. On November 26 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote: I mean the vast majority of potential freedoms could be done away with without making society significantly worse. Many can be done away with making society better. Maybe half my country agrees with you. It wasn't always the same. Individual sovereignty is very much not in vogue, benevolent social democracy (substitute collective societal responsibility here if you want) has replaced it. | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote: Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. | ||
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