The Glade 4.0

How many is that (20% of hardcore Republican voters)? See, I think approximately 98.2% of self-important, ill-informed, self-absorbed human beings aren't worth my concern and I was wondering how to really quantify those numbers into a hard number of I could care less about.

Just to be sure, that wasn't a passive aggressive attack on anyone, especially you RD, just a commentary on how much ~ten people should concern you.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

So when you claim "base", you really mean minority that you want to project as including a larger portion of the group population for some reason?

I don't believe "victim politics" extends to complaints that the other side is unfairly maligning you; that's just "politics". "Victim politics" is attempting to bludgeon your opponent into consenting to some program or bill or whatever because failing to do so is victimizing someone; i.e. "pass this bill or old people will eat dog food!" and the like.

Moreover, complaints of unfair maligning by the right are largely due to the fact that the left A) indulges in this regularly itself and B) has resorted to simply making every point of disagreement about how morally bankrupt the right supposedly is towards.. well, everything. Every time the Left has cricticized some aspect of the GWOT, Afghanistan, or Iraq, no matter how absurd the cricticism they make, any response by the right is likely to be met with the complaint that the right is saying they "hate America!!" Find out about some alleged atrocity? Just leap to the conclusion that it's America's fault, or at least some American serviceman's fault, and talk about how it's "par for the course" with references to endless other (mysteriously unspecified) incidents, and if anyone points out holes in the evidence or facts that mitigate or exonerate the people in question, just complain that the defender is "claiming you Hate America" for not instantly jumping on the guilt bandwagon.

As for the other, discussion has virtually ended because the left simply will not entertain any discussion anymore where it does not get to use its own baseline assumptions about what is and isn't right. Aside from the fact that this is usually based on utilitarian arguments that simply assume whetever benefit the left fancies is dominant and handwaving away any benefit of the position of the right based on nothing more than subjective assessment, it is positively hilarious to watch members of the left complain that the right won't listen to what they have to say, when any argument for their position has to include loud moral castigation for not already having adopted that position! I mean really, do you actually expect someone to listen to your arguments on why we ought to provide government heating oil to the poor, when arguments in favor are laced liberally (no pun intended) with comments about how only "morally bankrupt Republitards" would oppose it, and "want poor people to freeze to death" out of a "sense of entitlement".

Don't try to tell me this is equal between both sides or has always been like that. The fact of the matter is that while there have always been such elements to political discourse, the left went completely off the deep end over the 2000 election, and has never come back. The right adopting these tactics is largely a matter of not simply being screamed under. It is positively amazing how much utter nonsense about the time between 9/11 and about the 2004 election is simply repeated as gospel truth because the Left simply could not give GWB anything remotely resembling fair treatment, and has simply repeated what it wanted to beleive about his actions, knowledge, and motivations over and over and over and over and OVER again until people got tired of contesting the broken record, and then KEPT repeating it until people started believing it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What's really wrong with the republican base, is poor vision, arthritis, enlarged prostates, and too much wild, sloppy sex.

(old people)

You'd be cheering for death too if you were forced to sit in a hard chair with an *** full of hemorrhoids listening to politicians blabber for an hour.

Yes, but I'm not talking about a moral imperative to control Bob's choices; I'm talking about a moral imperative to help Bob, when he wants such help, even if the need for help arises because of his choices. In short, Bob's right to choose trumps any desire I might have to control him, but it doesn't eliminate any moral responsibility I might have to help him.

If Bob chooses not to get medical insurance, libertarian doctrine prevents me from forcing him to get that insurance. However, if Bob later finds himself in need of care he can't afford, there's nothing about libertarian doctrine that absolves me of the moral duty to provide charitable assistance to him. Libertarian doctrine is, at most, silent on that point. Now, you might argue that charitable assistance is fine, but if I force Steve to provide it to Bob via government taxation, then I have violated libertarian doctrine vis-a-vis Steve. Fair point, but as I've argued many times in the past, I think voluntary participation in a majoritarian political system with established, transparent rules effectively addresses that point, and to the extent it doesn't, all taxes and all spending are equally problematic, and limiting the complaint to "charitable" policies or policies that one disagrees with is inconsistent.

There isn't a moral duty to help Bob. Doing so is morally praiseworthy, but not morally required.

There might be a moral duty for Christians, or Muslims, or other religious people to help the poor in general, but even religious moral arguments do not ignore opportunity cost. One cannot help everyone, and in deciding where one's charity must go, one must weigh the merits of helping Bob vs. helping anyone else.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, "base" is a pretty common term in political analysis/commentary used to refer to the minority of voters in a party who are heavily engaged (i.e. the activists and the ones who reliably show up for elections, primaries, stump speeches, etc.) whose policy preferences and cultural assumptions tend to drive the messaging, if not always the actual policies, of the party. I wasn't using it as a loaded term.

RD:

Are you familiar with "The Giving Tree"?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

To each their own - I believe there is a moral duty to help, subject to things like practicality, opportunity cost, etc. My point, though, is that to the extent one thinks there is a private moral duty to help, libertarian doctrine doesn't purport to elminate that duty.

Yeah. God I hate that book. The Tree should totally have dropped a branch on that ungrateful ****. (And yes, I know that doesn't fit with what I'm saying, but seriously, **** that kid. )

It's relevant.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

No, it's not silent on that point. It directly addresses that point - as you've stated. Your moral responsibilities are just that - yours. You decide what to do based on your own moral code. How can a philosophy that highlights individual choices tell you how to make decisions based on your own moral code when the heart of the philosophy is that each individual decides for themselves what those decisions should be? Your own choices are your own, libertarian philosophy cannot absolve you of what you choose for yourself - that's the whole point.




True enough except for two caveats. One, we don't live in "a majoritarian political system with established, transparent rules", especially one where such "rules" are followed. Two, all taxes aren't created equal. Taxes that are "negative", or those that are imposed upon you through no positive action you take (income tax) are problematic, whereas taxes that are "positive", those that you choose to subject yourself to (sales tax) are not problematic in the context you are presenting. Spending is another kettle of fish...

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

RD, you're free to help Bob all you wish. What you aren't free is to force others to help Bob.

Your moral belief system !> others rights.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

There's a major problem with the idea that there's a moral duty to help them.

No matter how much help you give, there will always be a need for more. On the individual level trying to fulfill a moral duty to help everyone in need you are aware of would result in exhaustion and ruin. On the societal level, it results in endless demands for more, more, more, and if carried too far results in the ruin of society as every perceived need is addressed. This is the case even if we ignore those problems we simply can't do anything about because we lack the technology or whatever.

This attitude is precisely why the question of "what is the rich's fair share?" and any similar question that implies that a person may, in fact, not have a moral obligation to help everyone he runs across.

Now, I realize you didn't say "help everyone", but your argument necessarily leads there. "Bob" is simply some random person we have no connection with. If we help Bob, why not Fred, Jorge, Mohammed, Katarina, and so on and so forth?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I realized that there is a fine point I missed, one may offer help, one may not help without the consent of the subject.

DE, that is up to each person to decide based on their own individual moral code. Some may feel that it is their moral obligation to offer help to everyone regardless of the cost to themselves, others may feel that they need only offer help to a lesser extent.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I have not noticed, however, that this point has stopped anyone from trying to impose that moral duty on the rest of the population. RD may not agree with them, but it is not uncommon to find liberals arguing from utilitarian ethics that everyone has such a duty.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh, I agree, and it's not limited to liberals.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

RD, just a quick question to clear things up.

These peoples deaths that the Republicans are cheering about...are they liberals? 'Cause if they are, I'd say it's just the way of things these days.

People on the extremes of their party philosophies are wanting to see the other side as being without any merit whatsoever, as your position and arguments in this thread aptly demonstrate. Demons deserve their hell, right?

Pot, meet kettle.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Certainly not. However, those on the conservative side, tend to do it because they're socially conservative. Some people on the Liberatarian side want to impose it, but ironically, imposing it would render the very agency imposing it powerless to maintain it.

In any case, social conservatives tend to want to impose moral requirements based on either direct religious teaching, which is easily addressed by pointing to the first amendment, or based on values that more indirectly proceed from their beliefs. In that latter case, they're still easily addressed by simply pointing out that they serve no purpose except to make their proponents more comfortable with how everyone else acts.

Most liberal arguments, at least by those who are not half-educated fat college kids who like to rant about Bush to impress the liberal chicks they want to ****, however, boil down to a utilitarian argument. While utilitarian ethics clearly cannot be argued to be the objectively correct system, it can be argued that they work better than many other systems in terms of internal consistency and in terms of avoiding simply arbitrarily proclaiming things virtuous.

There is, however, a very insidious problem there: Utilitarian ethics impose the appearance of objectivity on assessment of harm and benefit. Because it is very very hard to assess harm and benefit very precisely, it becomes very tempting to simply proclaim what appeals to one's own ideology and feelings the greater benefit, while hand-waving away benefits of other courses of action, especially if those benefits are long-term or not easily rendered in a striking mental image.

To take the example of helping Bob, it is very easy to bludgeon people who are not prepared to counter such arguments into doing so by simply whipping out either "utilitarian ethics" and acting as if there is simply no room for argument about what is ethical within the system, or by simply using the mental image of Bob, starving and alone, to crush any counter argument that points out the consequences of helping each and every Bob regardless of what Bob has done to help himself.

This is how we end up with unending social spending; people who instinctively may realize that no, they are not obligated to help Bob, are convinced to support programs that force them, as well as everyone else to help Bob, because liberals using utilitarian ethics, or just unconciously doing the same with appeal to emotion, impose a moral burden on everyone else by law.

This is why it's important to contest the moral assertions made on this basis; not everyone accepts that its a matter of personal moral code. It's important to contest the moral utilitarian assertions because that is the only way to neutralize the emotional appeal. Utilitarian ethics in principle has some excellent merits, but in practice it is unworkable because it becomes a matter not of objective benefit or harm, but of whatever appeals most strongly to the emotions of the arguer and his target.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, said.

I find that I have two responses for people who ascribe utilitarian ethics as the "solution" to these problems depending on their level of intellectual competency:

1) I point out that:
They are skewing the ratio of "bad" and "good" in the opposite direction they intend.
Forcibly taking money from some to help others creates "bad".
Removing the agency of the "giver" by forcing them to help creates "bad".
Removing the agency of the "giver" negates all the good that would be created if they had "given" of free choice.
Government forcibly taking from one and giving to another has been empirically shown to create a feeling of entitlement in the recipient. That some should feel entitled to the work of others is another objective "bad".
A system of governmental entitlements has been empirically shown to create reliance on the entitlements by the recipient.
Allowing people to become reliant on the forcible "giving" of others creates "bad" in the form of dependency.
Allowing people to become reliant on the forcible "giving" of others creates "bad" in the form reduced individual agency.
The system they are attempting to perpetuate creates more "bad" and removes more "good" than the system creates - failing the smell test in their own Utilitarian Philosophy. Q.E.D.

2) I point out that:
They would create more "good" by locking themselves in a room and masturbating until they pass out and repeating, ad infinitum than they would outside of said room.

I get the impression that RD was looking for answers from, or looking to discredit, libertarian philosophy, and based my answers on that impression.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

'Cause every new debate brings more fun...

No, no...you misunderstood the reason for the boos, FarSky. They were clearly just booing the "trap question" and the principle of keeping social engineering out of military policy. The boos had nothing to do with any underlying animosity toward gay people.

I'm not a big fan of Santorum, but I've heard FarSky's commentary about the "conservatives" and RangerDave's repeated almost verbatim on NPR commentary shows ...

So, I have to ask ... what was so egregious in that video, Mr. Ground?

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Wait, before we go into that, do clarify: what 'commentary' did I provide? Particularly using the term 'conservatives?'

Also, to the other point, I don't listen to NPR, not as a matter of principle but as a matter of not listening to the radio, period.

Hmmm...maybe I should have started my own thread titled "This is what's wrong with Obama supporters/oh so tolerant liberals/democrat base/new civil tone etc..."

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."