In Support of Western Supremacy, Nationalism, and Imperialism.
In western culture, it is exceedingly common to despise and oppose nationalism and imperialism; for it tends to be barbaric, supremacistic, unnecessary and exclusive. Instead, westerners are more and more apt to accepting a version of cultural relativism. Viz., why should I be proud of my country? Why should my country start wars in the name of its values? It is just a nation meant to facilitate the protections and needs of the peopleafter all!
However, I think the western, liberal principles of tolerance and inclusiveness, although to some degree are perfectly warranted, have gone too far: there is such a thing as having an inferior culture (e.g., the Nazis), and there is such a thing as having a view which should not be tolerated (e.g., a supporter of sex offenses). One of the things I appreciate about Nietzsche, is how painfully down-to-earth the man was in his philosophy. We are still in a jungle: the in-group is more important than the out-groupeven though no Westerner likes to say that anymore (although they will still act like it when push comes to shove).
I submit to you, that you should accept a sense of nationalism in two respects. The first, in the sense that whatever nation you belong to you must have a vested interest in its flourishing and protection against other nationsor move to a different one (if you can). The second, in the sense that, if your country has substantially better politics than other ones, you should have a pride in it and want to expand its values to the more inferior ones (which leads to imperialism).
For those who are upset at my rhetoric (and perhaps the lens by which I am analyzing this), I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principlelike Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc. Some societies are so obviously structured in a way antithetical to the human good, that it is virtually impossible to justify leaving them be in the name of anti-imperialism. E.g., if we could take over North Korea right now without grave consequences (such as nuclear war), then it is obviously in our duty to do soand this is a form of imperialism. Why would you not be a Western supremacist?
Now, I will end this OP by noting that I see the obvious downsides of nationalism (when it becomes radical), like fascism, but it seems wrong to go to the opposite extreme and deny any nationalism and imperialism whatsoever. Who would like to try and change my mind?
However, I think the western, liberal principles of tolerance and inclusiveness, although to some degree are perfectly warranted, have gone too far: there is such a thing as having an inferior culture (e.g., the Nazis), and there is such a thing as having a view which should not be tolerated (e.g., a supporter of sex offenses). One of the things I appreciate about Nietzsche, is how painfully down-to-earth the man was in his philosophy. We are still in a jungle: the in-group is more important than the out-groupeven though no Westerner likes to say that anymore (although they will still act like it when push comes to shove).
I submit to you, that you should accept a sense of nationalism in two respects. The first, in the sense that whatever nation you belong to you must have a vested interest in its flourishing and protection against other nationsor move to a different one (if you can). The second, in the sense that, if your country has substantially better politics than other ones, you should have a pride in it and want to expand its values to the more inferior ones (which leads to imperialism).
For those who are upset at my rhetoric (and perhaps the lens by which I am analyzing this), I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principlelike Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc. Some societies are so obviously structured in a way antithetical to the human good, that it is virtually impossible to justify leaving them be in the name of anti-imperialism. E.g., if we could take over North Korea right now without grave consequences (such as nuclear war), then it is obviously in our duty to do soand this is a form of imperialism. Why would you not be a Western supremacist?
Now, I will end this OP by noting that I see the obvious downsides of nationalism (when it becomes radical), like fascism, but it seems wrong to go to the opposite extreme and deny any nationalism and imperialism whatsoever. Who would like to try and change my mind?
Comments (366)
Two questions.
1. How do you impose democracy upon a people by force?
2. Should all nations think this way? Should all of them declare war upon all the others to impose their values upon other nations by force?
I suppose this is the thesis of the OP. I have some questions about how nationalism is usually seen-as. One, would be the aspect of nationalism enabling negative consequences. I don't think this issue can be seen deontologically, with the baggage of human history in mind. The second question is whether if you don't accept the consequentialist assessment of the merits of nationalism, then on what merit do you asses its morality or goodness to a nation defined as nationalist?
I would be in favour of some kind of in-group supremacism for all groups, a healthy culture should celibrate itself, but I would be against imperialism because of issues of scale and cultural context. The justification for anti-imperialism would be the scale of imperialism. I believe a "culture" is something that is tied to a specific land and everything that comes with that, a certain climate, what kind of foods you can grow etc etc... There also need to be a certain sense of being culturally unified to speak of a culture, which implies that you cannot spread it to thin geographically. The problem of imperialism is that it disconnects peoples from the traditional ways of their land and their context, which typically causes problems done the line for centuries to come no matter the intentions.
Enforcing, similarly to how we do in the West, the idea of liberties, rights, and equal representation. As a side note, most of the time; the people want itthe government is just oppressing them, and so the solution tends to be just overthrowing that government.
Very good question: yes. If a nation believes that they have an importantly better position than another one, then they should think this way. Otherwise, you are saying, e.g., that a country which values democracy is equal to a country that actively oppresses its people. That's nonsense.
To be clear, I am not arguing that nations should go to war over trivial thingsand some cultural differences are just that; but if there are two nations so fundamentally different than each other, morally, then there should be an proportionate response by each to each other. Again, e.g., North Korea deserves to be usurped; and I cannot say that only Western countries should think this wayas that would be inconsistent and arbitrary. I just think that countries should imperialize for good reasons and in proportionate manners in relation to what is actually good.
Partly because 'degeneracy' is far more evident in some western countries than in some you consider inferior. If you were serious about promoting democracy, you would work for reform in your own country.
Because western leaders and nearly all of their people lack the drive to conquer. Because 'democratic values' are not robust enough to transplant: democracy survives only where it grows from a unique seed, in conditions appropriate to the climate.
Because it can't be imposed. Imposition is the opposite of democracy.
Because no western nation is powerful enough, no matter how many people it kills, cripples and displaces, no matter how much land it renders uninhabitable, how much of its resources are sacrificed, to attain, let alone maintain, such an empire. No nation is asks a foreigner to relieve it of its own government; even the most unhappy population will fight for its identity.
Quoting Bob Ross
That if doesn't bear scrutiny - in relation to more countries North Korea. That, too, is a good reason: consequences to the aggressor. What's the point of an empire of radioactive rubble and rotting corpses?
That's the inevitable destination: jingoism, exceptionalism, xenophobia, militancy, ethnic cleansing, oppression and/or civil war.
Theres essentially three theses:
1. The western supremacy thesis: western values are objectively better than many, if not all, non-western values which have historical arisen and, consequently, those values are superior.
2. The nationalism thesis: you should have some sense of pride in your country insofar as you have a vested interest in it and that, if applicable, it has superior values to other countries. Nationalism, to a certain extent, unites its citizens in a common good.
3. The imperialism thesis: imperialism is not per se wrong, as a proportionate response to inferior values is necessary and obligatory. The problems with imperialism was historically the immorality which came frequently with it: the West didnt go in and free less-powerful groups but, rather, actively enslaved them for profit.
What do you mean?
I am not sure I am following: I am neither a deontoligist nor a consequentialistnor does the OP presuppose either of them.
Most abstractly, based off of what is actually good. If you mean to ask what normative ethical theory I subscribe to, then it is a form of Virtue Ethics.
That's partially fair; but I would note that imposing important and vital political systems is good. E.g., if you are against imperialism completely, then we wouldn't have any justification to take over North Korea, Talibanian Afghanistan, etc. Nations have a moral obligation to imperialize sometimes.
I can foresee, as a possibility, a nation which comes up with a better economic system than capitalism; and if that happens then, yes, they should imperialize everyone else (assuming it drastically fixes the gaping issues with capitalism without introducing new catastrophic issues like communism). Either way, if I grant your point or not, it results in my OP being right.
I didnt follow this at all. What do you mean?
Why? You can take over a country with the sole purpose of giving it the gift of democracy and then trying to salvage the culture as much as possible to keep the traditions. You are confusing the immoral acts of many instances of imperialism with its generic idea. If the West took over North Korea, e.g., we would not, in all probability, do anything remotely similar to what Columbus did to the Natives. Wouldnt you agree?
I would say they only have a moral obligation to conquer other land if it's in their own vital security interests. But to the point of imposing political systems, would you say historical track records are good for these kind of projects?
Like the USSR appointed itself liberator of the world's exploited proletariat? It's not easy to see the log in one's own eye. Whenever economic parity is approached, the capitalist nations smother it in its cradle. No such country could survive a single generation, let alone grow powerful enough to threaten other regimes. Even if it wanted to, which fair and decent governments don't.
Quoting Bob Ross
What I said:: there are always consequences. Consequences are inescapable. These days, consequences tend to come in the form of nuclear warheads, which several of your 'inferior' societies possess.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I can't. And neither can a functional democracy. In order to have a government that's both arrogant and blind enough to try to impose itself on other sovereign nations, first, you need either absolute monarchy or a military-backed dictatorship.
Quoting Vera Mont is the sequence of event leading to the prerequisite populist dictatorship. Let's see how Mexico and Canada fare in the next four years.
Quoting Bob Ross
Oh, yes, I agree. All Columbus did was report back to the monarchy. You would do to the Natives pretty much what China, Rome and Britain did.
Yes, I understand. I believe a normative theory has applications on the very governing of a nation. I think my point is that nationalism, and the currents of history seem to indicate that certain ideologies should be viewed in terms of their consequences that they may entail towards a nation. Regarding which, nationalism has been historically viewed as a source of ills towards any country aspiring towards a democratic state.
The fact that you would name countries like Iran, China and India in this list betrays an ignorance that is hard to explain in mere words.
Meanwhile, the US is aiding and abetting genocide in Palestine as we speak, and has a well-documented track record of genocide running throughout its history. (Native Americans, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, East-Timor, countless conflicts in the Middle-East with death tolls running in the millions, etc.)
This thread reads like a bad joke - the last spasms of a morally bankrupt empire whose outdated propaganda apparently still holds some unfortunate souls in its grasp.
Oh good, an easy one. I don't even have to try to address your nauseating rhetoric. Here's the answer - it won't work. We weren't even able to "forcibly impose" our values on rinky-dink third world countries like Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua even though we killed millions of people, mostly civilians, trying to do it. Generally, our interference has made things worse, e.g. our party in Iraq ended up sending millions of refugees into Europe. Just running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time overtaxed our armed forces.
So, if the Nazis would have stayed in Germany, then you think no one would be warranted in stopping them?
I dont think theres a particularly good track record, no. However, thats because countries were taking each other over for bad reasons.
Not at all. I am evaluating the justifiability of imperialism via a moral realist theory: I am not saying that every country should just take each other over for any willy-nilly reasons. The problem with your view, is you have to deny obvious cases where a country should intervene. For example, if the Nazis stayed in Germany (in the sense of not invading other countries), then would you say that no country should have invaded Germany to stop the Holocaust? Thats the consistent conclusion of your argument here.
Oh, are you noting that, in practicality, there would be some consequence to invading another country? I agree with that. There would be consequences to invading Germany to get rid of the Nazis.
It wouldnt be blind: it would be operating under policy guidelines; just like the Geneva convention or how the UN tries to enforce universal rightsinstead, though, we would actually do something about it when it happens.
Imperialism does not presuppose a dictatorship. It never has and never will.
Uhhh, no he didnt, lol. He would literally cut the hands off of slaves if they didnt meet their daily quotas when mining. The dude was brutal.
I could see that, insofar as it is fascistic: are you claiming that nationalism and fascism are the same?
Leave it to Burgerlanders to say the most ignorant, barbaric rubbish on a daily basis. They are born with an incurable sort of brain virus that leaves them unable to perform the most basic rational operations. What great philosopher or artist came from that place? Truly a stain on mankind.
The most offensive part is that those blobs of seed oil like to pretend they are allies of Europe, and many idiotic Europeans fall for it, when their shenenigans in the Middle East are the direct cause of the refugee crises that has resulted in the rape and death of thousands and thousands of European women.
Quoting Tzeentch
North Koreans at least know that they live in a horrible place. Meanwhile yankees pay the government to take their own children away and put them on hormone blockers. What can I say? God is punishing them lavishly.
Quoting Bob Ross
This sort of 8th grade question really is only seriously stated in places where the majority is of a culture summarised by carbs and rap and no basic education. The funny part is that this is the standard in any webspace where English is the common language. Curious.
This must be a joke.
China has concentration camps; harvests the organs of North Korean defectors for the black market; uses North Korean defector women in sophisticated sex-slave rings; denies people the right of privacy, free speech, freedom of religion, etc.; uses child labor in factories; need I go on?
Iran has a moral division of the police that is designed to prosecute women that dont follow Islamic tradition (like wearing Hijabs); has temporary marriage laws so that men can rent daughters from families for sex slavery; brutally kills homosexuals; need I go on?
India, although it is now illegal, still has a very much enforced caste system where the lowest caste is called the untouchables, which are considered so worthless that they are not actually in the caste system (according to other classes in that system).
These countries are ones you would...defend?!?
True, but they dont do it anymore. Those countries I listed do still do it.
I dont about that: its much more nuanced than that.
Quoting Bob Ross
Your political and social elites have several pedophile rings, buddy.
Someone defending imperialism should at least have their physique on show, but I guarantee that OP is out of shape.
This is a fair point; but dont you think we have a duty to try?
If I take your argument seriously, then we should stop the Nazis if they were to stay in their own country; we shouldnt stop North Korea from literally torturing their own people; etc.
We should want to expand western values as much as possible. Perhaps, in some situations, it is not feasible to go to all-out-war. I agree with that; but theres others tactics we can deploy, which are equally imperialistic.
Oh, of course. Your portrayal of countries like China and India as 'degenerate, inferior societies' sure puts you in pole position as an expert on nuance. :lol:
My OP is about Western values; not specifically the US. However, the US could wipe Mexico and Canada off the mapthats not even a fair fight. You are confusing wars that the US was in where they were fighting something other than the actual people there with a full-out war with another country. The US got there butts kicked, many times, because of the dynamics of navigating the innocent civilians and the gorilla fighters (and what not). In a full out war, the US would just obliterate their opponent (with a few exceptions).
EDIT: I should also mention that nuclear war evens out the playing field quite a bit, which I excluded from my analysis above.
Anyways, this isnt relevant to the OP.
Show me evidence of a major, Western nation that ITSELF sactioned, officially or unofficially, child sex offenses. Theres not a single one.
I would like to hear your nuanced defense of the accusations I made to each of those three countries. I am open-minded; but I cannot envision such a defense.
They're not willy-nilly, they're at bad guys. Every imperial aspiration is fed by some self-perceived need, threat, imperative or benevolent wrapping on a greed motive. Your moral justification isn't mine; America's is not Britain's or Russia's. There is no 'objective' realism.
Quoting Bob Ross
No country did; most wouldn't even take in refugees. It wasn't until after they themselves felt threatened that the allies confronted Germany. No country is stepping in to stop Russia or Israel today. And stopping a genocide is not equivalent to imposing one's own political system on a non-belligerent nation.
Quoting Bob Ross
Who "we"? Under what mandate? The UN is a legitimate international organization that is poorly supported by its western members; "we" could only be vigilantes.
Quoting Bob Ross
You read this in history, or tea leaves? How else do you get the majority of a people to volunteer for extreme hardship and danger, for the purpose of imposing one government's will on another? If you can manipulate people into believing their own country is in danger, yes; otherwise, you have to coerce them. As in Korea and Viet Nam.
Quoting Bob Ross
He wasn't alone; the regime was brutal. He reported to Ferdinand II and had the use of soldiers, administrators, overseers and priests sent by the monarch. Is there any record of the common people of Spain or Portugal clamouring to bring civilization to the Americas? D you truly believe they would have voted for the conquests on moral grounds?
I assume you meant to say "not stop the Nazis." Again - both pre-WW2 Germany and today's North Korea have or had formidable militaries - North Korea has nuclear weapons. China would never let us attack without a response. They've already done it once. Also, South Korea would be destroyed in any war. This is a fantasy.
Has a military intervention to protect tyrannized people ever worked? Maybe - What is history's judgment of the Balkan intervention in the early 1990s? We tried something similar in Libya and destabilized the whole region. We imposed sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s. Hundreds of thousands of people died while the Hussein family continued to eat foi gras and bon bons.
I'm not exactly looking forward to that. In the case of Canada, they probably don't need to invade; they're imposing their 'values' on us through money, propaganda, infiltration and appeals to the meanest, dumbest factions. But at least we get the best of their defectors.
Mexico won't need invading, either; it will be inundated with poor migrants from all over South ans Central America. As per current Western Nationalism.
I think once we start justifying the horrors of war in the name of the good we've lost sight of the good.
I don't think you have to invade them, no, if they have no intention of attacking you or your allies... there are other measures. Besides avoiding WWII seems like another solid argument no to do it.
He's a question for you. Now Trump is elected one could make an argument that the US poses a treat to the health of earth's biosphere, as it is one of the biggest polluters and under Trump it also has no intention of doing something about it. Are other countries morally obliged to attack the US in order to prevent further damage to earth's biosphere?
Quoting Bob Ross
The reasons for the war don't necessarily have a lot to do with successful installation of a new political system... it's one factor of many maybe.
Bob, Bob, Bob. Your position is such a jumble.
Maybe you thought to yourself, why don't we do more to oppose tyranny throughout the world? Why do we allow people to be oppressed by their own governments?
-- But, interrupted skeptical Bob, on what grounds would we oppose tyranny?
Democracy! Our values!
But then you realized this is trouble: a core democratic value is tolerance.
Which is fine, you thought, except people take it too far, allow themselves to be paralyzed by a mamby-pamby cultural relativism.
We've become like people who *say* they have religion, but don't want to convert anyone.
Well do we believe in democracy or don't we? If we do, let's act like it! Let's go convert some mofos.
-- Just because we believe? asks skeptical Bob.
Hell yeah! We believe, and if we really believe that's enough.
And if others believe something else, let them try too. Every country should act on whatever it believes, because ..., because ...
Because we can't give in ...
to relativism.
Thats your problem: you arent a moral realist.
You didnt answer the question; and provided, instead, a red herring. I will ask again but with more clarity: if the Nazis stayed in Germany (in the sense of not invading other countries), then would you say that no country is justified in invading Germany to stop the Holocaust?
Ideally, the Western, modern world. Now, is it feasible for everyone to band together in the name of the human good? Probably not.
In the name of the human good, or at least what is good. Most people would understand how it would be justified to conquer the Nazis to stop the Holocaust; but, to your point, many people would be too cowardly to act.
The way they handled the conquest of abhorrent; because they were not trying to help the people there: they were wanting world domination. Imperialism is not identical with national world domination.
What the OP is referring to by imperialism, is its simple form of a nation having a duty, under such-and-such circumstances, to conquer and impose their values onto another nation (without it being legitimate self-defense or something like that).
Correct, but thats despite the point. I am saying that, in principle, you would have to reject the west invading the Nazis, or North Korea, or China, even if it were easily possible to dobecause you are against imperialism.
Whether or not, in practicality, it is possible to do so is irrelevant to my point right now.
It was in Afghanistan until the US got out. Al Qauda was eradicated and the Taliban was suppressed; but then the US left and the Taliban took power (again).
How about preventing the proposed persecution of liberals, women and immigrants? Nobody's about to intervene on behalf of those threatened minorities. Nobody's even going to aid the protests that will inevitably form. The US will have to play out its own internal drama.
Thats true, but despite the point.
Really? If you could invade and conquer North Korea with no casualties nor with starting any other wars (with other countries), you would choose to let the north korean people continue to be butchered and tortured?
China is the biggest polluter; and renewable energy produces more pollution to manufacture and maintain than fossil fuels.
If it actually were an existential-planet-threat and other countries actually had a way to significantly reduce pollution (other than population control), then yes. I can do you one better: what if the US decided that they were going to detonate a 1,000 nukes for funwhy wouldnt other countries try to stop them?
What point are you making? I didn't follow. Cultural relativism and hyper-tolerance are nonsense.
No, a reality-check. It's the UN's mandate, not any self-appointed guardian's, to organize interventions against genocide, but those morally superior modern western nations are mighty slow to support UN initiatives.
When the morally superior western nations finally did defeat Germany, they didn't prevent the next genocide; they didn't resettle the survivors in their own countries: they took the lands of people they had recruited to their cause and plunked a European population on it, which started 77 years of sporadic carnage.
This 'duty' to fix other peoples tends to be expensive and end very badly.
Quoting Bob Ross
Or they're too sensible to die for your assessment of The Good.
Quoting Bob Ross
No empire conquers other peoples in order to help them.
Quoting Bob Ross
I get that. You're wrong, it's illegitimate, it kills more people than it saves and it doesn't work.
I agree with some aspects of your OP but I think it's framed in a somewhat inflammatory way. I agree with you, for example, that the European liberal tradition (in the broad sense) and its associated values are valuable and worth preserving. The Taliban and some of the other failed states are not really examples of alternative political systems, but the failure of politics altogether. But lumping China and India in with that - both of which have considerably longer histories of civilisation than does Europe - veers pretty close to out-and-out racism.
I'm with you in opposing the reflexive denigration of both liberalism and Western cultural values, but I think it could be approached in a far more nuanced way. (Also agree with the above that Trump/MAGA is a serious internal threat to liberalism.)
I've always loved this one:
The Send-Off
By Wilfred Owen
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.
????
"like wrongs hushed-up" ? oh, he could write.
What do you dream of, Bob? Do you dream of peace and plenty? Or do you dream of making people listen to you?
It's framed in an extremely inflammatory way. It's one thing to criticize say, the Chinese or Iranian (or Indian) government; it's a whole other thing to call their society degenerate and inferior. OP completely lost me there. The phrase to use is "repressive government" not "inferior society."
I do believe certain societies can warrant that label, but we need to be very careful.
This is not really true. This is from the UN's guidelines for peacekeepers:
Quoting UN Principles of peacekeeping
There can be a troubling contradiction in extending the value of liberal tolerance to those who don't necessarily support or understand the liberal attitudes that fostered it.
Case in point is the difficulties faced by Islamic migrants and refugees coming to Western cultures. Islam doesn't recognise the separation of church and state, and in theory at least, can only support Shariah law. At the same time, refugee support groups and activists do all they can to support Islamic refugees, even despite this tension. But this can have difficult consequences when Islamic conservatism conflicts with Western libertarianism. The town of Hamtramck, Michigan, made headlines in 2023 for being the first US city with a majority Muslim council. Great joy amongst supporters of cultural diversity. But one of the first things they did was to ban displays of LGBT flags on public property on the grounds that homosexuality is forbidden in Islamic law. (I wonder how Green Left activists who are strident in defense of both refugee and LGBT rights manage to reconcile this conflict.)
Then from the right, there's considerable hostility towards liberalism on different grounds, for example Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed. But it's on the far right that you also find the most virulent forms of white supremacy, which also undermines liberalism and is far from representing the best of Western culture in my opinion. The invocation of Nazi symbolism by these groups is far from coincidental in my view.
(On an old forum, far far away, there was an exceptionally annoying poster who's entire shtick was the internet meme that Beethoven was actually African or had descended from an African progenitor. By suggesting Beethoven was Black, the meme challenges the exclusivity of European high culture and disrupts the narrative that classical music is solely the legacy of white Europeans. The Green Left have many of these kinds of dubious memes.)
I suppose what excarbates all of this is the absence of any kind of common cultural ground, any sense that 'what unites us is more important than what divides us', as Obama used to say. But then, conservatives would say that this is because Western culture destroyed its own heritage by undermining Judeo Christian values, and that in the absence of any sense of revealed truth, there can only ever be a kaleidoscope of opinions.
//but then, the way Biblical religion is constituted was bound to engender fragmentation, as it was divisive from its inception. It's a real can of worms. Perhaps it is a problem with ideologies of all kinds.//
Think of different societies as being like plants. Some are corn plants, some are palms, and some are cacti. Each evolved to survive its own set of challenges. Governmental systems are about the survival of a society rather than about some higher good. Basically, what's healthy for a corn plant will kill a cactus.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You ask everyone what they prefer, without others knowing what they said, granting everyone an equal say.
Those are some basics at least; not what I'd normally call an imposition.
If most said "I want Stalin to do as he please", then they may not get a second chance at this, thereby surrendering the principle.
There's lots more associated with democracy, but those are some basics anyway.
I hope you're enjoying your visit to Earth, but you should really check with your parents before interacting with the natives.
Where does that empower any nation that considers itself superior to the nation in which a wrong is taking place to invade and impose its own values?
Quoting jorndoe
And this is practicable in a nation of 50 million - how? I assume, first you asked each of the people in your own country whether they supported an intervention half-way around the world. Could take a while....
Like the US and its allies did for 20 years? The US public isn't even willing to support Ukrainians, who are actually willing to fight for their freedom in large numbers and seem plenty competent enough to win if given decent support. Initial support for helping them repel an invasion fell apart as soon as it was associated with a mild rise in prices and, all things considered, a fairly mild amount of expenditures. But that's democracy.
And it's hard to imagine the public being any more bought in to defending Taiwan, let alone occupying some place that doesn't want to be occupied.
The most successful US interventions: (West) Germany, Japan, and Korea had a level of involvement and expense that the current consumption focused politics of the US (and EU) would never allow for. Other relative successes, Kosovo and Iraqi Kurdistan, could just as easily have gone the other way, like Vietnam. Simply put, democracy itself warrants against such evangelism. This isn't 1946; people's views tend to be very zero sum. Something like Eisenhower doing a massive deployment to stabilize Lebanon could never happen today.
And note: the US didn't try to push democracy on South Korea originally. It applied some pressure, but that was largely internal, as it generally [I]has[/I] to be.
Although I did note Peter Hartcher's OP on the outcome in the US Election thread.
I was pointing out that the UN does not authorize it's peacekeepers to do the kinds of things @Bob Ross proposes.
It's equivelent to the west borough baptist church or KKK being used as a general representation of Christianity.
The level of racism and western supremacist mindset in this thread is laughable.
Liberal folks claim to be "anti racist" and against police brutality in the US,but then accept this blatant imperialist racism and violence against non western nations!!!
Have you heard of Sufism wayfarer,and how many Muslims have you interacted with to draw your incorrect conclusions?
Besides the point you are trying to make maybe, but I think these situational practical concerns typically are more important than any moral concern in deciding to go to war. I don't think anyone should be morally obliged to attack the US for instance, whatever it does, if only because they would loose that war horribly.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think you get to strip away everything that is salient about a concrete situation, and still have something usefull or applicable to say about how to act in that situation. There usually are casualities in a war and allies that join in... why would we want to ignore all that to determine the morality of an action?
Quoting Bob Ross
China is at least acknowledging the problem and trying to do something about it. It also pollutes way less per capita because it has 3 times the population, and has less historical pollution build up... The US is also the architect, protector and main driver behind this whole global system we have that is the main cause of all of this, so I really don't think there is much of a case to made for not seeing the US as the main culprit... if we had to assign blame anyway.
Quoting Bob Ross
Does it really need to be an existential threat? I don't think so, there's plenty of non-existential damage that could be totally unacceptable, like say the damage we are on track of doing because of climate change. And if the US was a threat to earths biosphere, or if it detonated 1000 nukes for fun, than I guess it would be justified for other countries to try to stop it because that would be a threat to the security of all those countries. So maybe my counter-example wasn't the best example for the point I was trying to make, that morality by itself seems like a poor reason to attack a country.
And why not?
Do note that patriotism, love of your country, isn't a synonym for nationalism or jingoism, that your country is better than others.
When nationalism is defined as identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations, then it's totally logical to oppose this idea. I surely do love my country, but I won't think that my country and it's people are better than others as I've met a lot of foreigners too. I might see my countrymen as awesome, but then the Dutch too are awesome too. And societies that have many difficult problems, well, I can be just happy that my country doesn't have them.
And imperialism? Well, we see classic 19th Century imperialism in action with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even if this could be presented as an attempt Russian reconquista. Our present system of having open borders and cooperation inside the Nordic states and in the EU are a positive step from historical experience of one country trying to conquer all of Europe (be it France or Germany).
It is totally another thing to look at your nations history and see nothing but negative in it.
Quoting Bob Ross
So what's wrong with patriotism then? As I remarked, nationalism and especially jingoism have these negative sides to them, which is clear in their definitions.
Yet the last thing you mention I would be a bit critical about it. Just what do you mean by "want to expand its values to the more inferior ones"? Look, if things are good in your country, then let that example then stand out. But don't be so cocky and full of hubris that you think you have to expand your values to others. If it works well, they can copy it from their own free will. If they ask help, then you can give help, but don't force something to others they have not asked for. Your then simply arrogant.
Besides, the idea of superiority or inferiority of a country is imaginary. One bad event and your shiny image can be broken, even if all the people are still quite the same.
I agree. And being convinced that it can't happen to us is a recipe for blindness in case it does start happening. Humility protects.
The UN is a joke: they dont intervene in genocides because they lack the power to. The very countries which are doing genocide are members of the UN, and vote on the matter; which is incredible.
I think what you are trying to note here is that the UN is not self-appointed and countries arebut is that really true? I dont think so.
Do you think members of a government, in representative republics, are self-appointed???
I have never argued that the West has historically done no wrong deeds.
But we are learning! Like I said, we are at the stage of Western development where we understand, by-at-large, how to proportionately and properly treat people. All I am saying is sometimes you have a duty to overtake another nation because that nation is so degenerate. You would have to argue that there either are no such degenerate nations (which is absurd), or that we shouldnt intervene (which is immoral).
Why not? You dont think we should try to help oppressed people in other nations?
Thats not always true though. You are conflating a subset of scenarios with all of them.
Why is is inflammatory to say it with the proper words? This is yet another example of the effects of hyper-tolerance: we no longer can admit to ourselves the obvious truthinstead, we dance around it.
It has nothing to do with race.
China is a totalitarian regime; harvests the organs of North Korean defectors to sell in the market; uses North Korean defector females as sex slaves; bans free speech; bans freedom of religion; has concentration camps; helps recapture North Korean defectors; need I go on?
India stills has an unofficial caste system, where there is a caste considered so worthless that they are untouchable.
I challenge you: how are these societies not inferior?
To you, is that a good or bad thing?
I dream of a state of universal human flourishing; where each person, not just human, has equal, fundamental rights and liberties......or do you mean when I am sleeping?
The reason I used those terms, is because it is true; and your terms do not accurately portray the point.
For example, india doesnt have just a problem of a repressive government: their society, the legacy of castes, is still enforced by everyone at a societal level. The society itself still embodies the view that the untouchables are worthless scumyou cant mask that with its a repressive government.
Thats true; but wouldnt you agree Talibanian Afghanistan is a prime example where it is warranted?
Thats an oddly good analogy.
Ughhhh, cultural relativismyet again. Nope. There are moral facts.
The US did not do anything remotely similar to what the Taliban is doing: am shocked you are trying to make that comparison. Perhaps I am misunderstanding.
The US isnt in a position to be funding external wars right now; thats why US citizens are fed-up. They have a serious budgeting problem that needs to be fixed.
However, to your point, I agree that most people would rather trade the lives of innocent out-group members a bit more flourishing in their in-group.
Hmmm, let me ask you this:
if the US could take over North Korea with zero casualties (across the board) without threatening a war with other countries (like China) nor a nuclear war, then should they do it?
Like what? The UN is a charade.
You would have to prove that there is an underlying principle that is necessary for government to even justly operate.
The American Revolution used a lot of "self-evident" truths for this. The problem is that contrary to your view, it was not brought from without, but came from within. Even then, only 1/3 of Americans were "pro" revolution. 1/3 were "Torries" (wanted to remain British), and 1/3 were agnostic (and this is not including slaves or Native Americans of course).
Importing a revolution only works if people want it internally. The American Revolution was fueled by mainly large landholders, lawyers, and merchants that were well-read in Enlightenment ideals (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire, etc.). The culture comes before the action, generally. China, Iran, North Korea, et al. are highly restrictive precisely to reduce exposure to this. So, perhaps the validity of your argument comes from somehow opening doors of cultural exchange, not outright war.
Quoting Bob Ross
As guardians of other countries, yes. Candidates don't run on aggressive foreign policy. The American people have just elected an isolationist president who doesn't give a sweet ff about other countries. Quoting Bob Ross
Because: Quoting Bob Ross
conquest is far more expensive than aid, and many representatives oppose even the barely adequate level of aid that might prevent those bad effects you want to march in to remedy.
If the biggest, healthiest (for whatever short time in the future) economy and the biggest, most expensive army in the world can't or won't oppose dictators, who do you think is capable or willing?
Nations go to war when they or their assets are threatened, when they have an obligation to allies, or when they have something to gain.
I absolutely do. By prevention - like, not propping up and arming bad leaders; like not bombing civilians or supplying bombs to those who will; like empowering the common people; like supplying medicine and technology. Not by conquest. That only substitutes a foreign oppressor for a native one.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm opining that your subset is a pipedream.
You are absolutely right to note, in practicality, the consequences matter.
Of course you can. Thats how ethics is done. What you are arguing for is moral particularismwhich doesnt work.
The reason it matters to analyze imperialism on its own merits, is that it changes how one thinks about politics ideally. If you are absolutely anti-imperialism; then you will never try to subject another nation to ones nations values out of principleirregardless of the consequences.
None of this is true. China abuses the environment and does nothing about it. They are the largest annual emissions since 2006, and their total energy-related emissions is twice that of the US.
It doesnt. My point is that it has to be severe enough to warrant taking a nation over. Not all cultural differences are worth fighting aboutworth imperializing over.
Then you have no good reasons to ever attack a country; for you are not basing it off of what is actually good, which belongs to ethics.
The nationalism I was advocating for can sometimes be at the detriment of the interests of other nations but it is NOT necessarily so: countries behave this way all the time. The in-group matters more than the out-group---just not always.
Is there any disparity in values between your country and another that would make you think it is better? What if we kept slowly making your country better and better and another worse and worsewhen, roughly, if at all, would you say yeah, my country is objectively better?
Nothing is wrong with it; nor certain forms of nationalism. Patriotism is a form of nationalism.
E.g., westernize Talibanian Afghanistan.
Why is that cocky and full of hubris? We do this all the time. E.g., if my neighbor likes different food than me, then no big deal; but if they like raping women...now I am going to intervene and subject them to better morals. What you are saying, e.g., is that we shouldnt ever intervene because it is cocky. Confidence is not the same as arrogance.
You think North Korea is willingly going to stop torturing their citizens?!? Do you think a serial killer is going to magically decide to stop raping and killing women? This is hyper-liberal nonsense.
Three issues give me to reject the proposal.
My methodological individualism leads me to oppose the sociology. A nation does not impose its values on other nations. The individuals in government impose their own values on individuals in another nation, whether the rest of the nation approves or not.
Human flourishing is not the goal of the state. Its goal is to secure its power and advance its own interests. It is an anti-social institution and not fit to impose social values.
Imposing values on another group of people is wrong for the same reason it would be wrong for them to do it to a western nation: it isnt up to them. They have not been afforded any right to do so.
It's like beer, it's good and it's good for you.
It is only Authoritarians,control freaks and the ignorant who want to culturally hegomonise and use group violence as a means to enforce economic slavery.
Yeah, we have a different sense of what morality is it seems... I'm not sure we can get over this in this discussion. I'm not a moral realist, and I don't think this is how we should do ethics at all.
Quoting Bob Ross
The West has been exporting its production to low-income countries like China for decades to get its products cheaper, it's the production-center of the globalised world... and China's population is three time the size of the US like I said, of course it will have larger emmissions at this particular moment. But it seems hardly fair to only judge a country on that singular metric without regard to historical context.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I don't view things in terms of some overarching actual good.... "Actual good" in war is usually merely things valued from the perspective of the one citing it as a justification for war.
Yes, that. No country invades another country and kills its people for their own good. After the pillage and installation of a governor, the conqueror might bring some of its more advanced technology and introduce its own - sometimes - more efficient admininstrative style ... usually to the detriment of the local culture and class structure; usually with the result of another war for that country's independence.
I was just pointing out to Vera Mont that the UN would not be useful in the situations you two are discussing.
Give us some examples where it's worked. The only possible one I can think of is the Balkans in the 1990s, and I'm not sure about that.
Why should it be so?
Quoting Bob Ross
Sovereignty is one crucial thing for any nation. And we shouldn't "make some country worse and worse". Those countries that have internal problems, those are for themselves to solve. If the idea is to let's say make North Korea part of South Korea, just like the allies fought Nazi Germany then well, there's a war to be fought over that. And that kind of "helping" isn't what helping other nations is about. Only If they make their problems to be a problem for other countries, then there is a reason to respond.
And first of all, people in those countries that have problems do really understand and know there own problems, it's not something that others have to tell them.
Quoting Bob Ross
So are jingoism and ultra-nationalism also part of nationalism, then why promote a term that has also such much negative aspects and can be misunderstood? One can surely define just what one wants to promote. People surely can understand the benefits of a collective idea of a nation and a state and can understand how these ideas can be also abused.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hah!
And how did that end up? It ended with the US backstabbing it's own ally it put into place and left it's NATO allies dumbfounded about just what happened (there were more NATO troops than US troops in Afghanistan in the end in Afghanistan). Just like the US did with South Vietnam. Luckily the US stood with South Korea and didn't leave it to Kim Il Sung. I guess if it would be for Trump, the US would handed over South Korea to the North: Kim Il Sung would have gladly signed a peace deal like the Taliban got. Then we could have a discussion of how simply Koreans are incapable of democracy or anything, I guess.
Quoting Bob Ross
Wow.
So what society is OK with their daughters being raped? Tell me what society in the World is where parents are OK with that? Seems that you have quite the obscure ideas about the morals of "inferior people" or "inferior nations".
Sorry Bob, but now perhaps your ideas of other people are coming out...
And I'll repeat what I said: if some country makes their own problems to be problems of other countries, then obviously the countries been effected can intervene.
@ssu. I said as much earlier in the thread.
These "ideas" are really deliberate propaganda against non Europeans and especially Muslims.
There is no society at large that has these ideas that @Bob Ross is claiming.
But I know one "civilisation" that has plundered and enslaved mankind economically by military force. And it ain't the east.
So really,the oppressor is the imperialist colonial west. And that is historically irrefutable over the last 110 years.
Quoting Swanty
Yes, the Mongol Horde made quite a wreck of places. Although it wasn't enslavement, but ideas like clearing the people away to make grasslands for the horses. I remember it was a Chinese person that had to persuade the Mongol rulers in the benefits of having humans around to pay taxes.
Quoting Swanty
How irrefutable has this been in the 2010's and the 2020's?
I think the last vestiges of this colonial rule has been going out with the French having to leave the Sahel countries.
I believe in free speech,so Bobby is free to explain and give his opinions. They are very instructive to me.
The one civilisation I was referring to that enslaved and hegemonised was Europe,and it's rampant colonialism,with the US also.
2010 we had the orchestrated "Arab spring"interventions,we have genocide in Palestine currently. The US engineered Ukraine conflict. And the less talked about western backed conflicts currently in Africa.
And one of the biggest imperialist projects still going is the IMF loans with tremendous debt and political strings attached.
The book "confessions of an economic hitman" shows how some of this economic thuggery is achieved and maintained.
The success of liberalism lies in it's individualistic approach to values, and the formation of a government which doesn't force a set of values upon its population. Any belief that a set of values should be forced onto the population is an extremist and anti-liberal belief. The extremity of the ones value is of no regards to such a society, as long as the individual acts within the lawful framework, they should be free from any unnecessary government action. The liberal government enforces neutrality in actions, not in minds or communication.
Quoting Bob Ross
The in-group is the individual, their friends and, their family. If an individual was to extend their care to all factors that effect them, then you wouldn't get nationalism, you'd get globalism (since countries are no longer distinct, not even in culture). I think you are confusing conservative values for classically liberal values. A conservative wants a common culture, a classical liberal wants a government that allows him to be left to his own values. Individualism is a primary goal of liberalism, it is antithetical to this conservative goal.
------------
However, I agree that liberalism should be spread and enforced globally. Individuals should have rights and freedoms everywhere.
I do see your point.
Please enlighten me. What conclusion did I draw that was wrong?
Why are you asking me for enlightenment when you already presumptously claimed to know about Islam and what migrants face?
]There can be a troubling contradiction in extending the value of liberal tolerance to those who don't necessarily support or understand the liberal attitudes that fostered it.
Case in point is the difficulties faced by Islamic migrants and refugees coming to Western cultures. Islam doesn't recognise the separation of church and state, and in theory at least, can only support Shariah law. At the same time, refugee support groups and activists do all they can to support Islamic refugees, even despite this tension. But this can have difficult consequences when Islamic conservatism conflicts with Western libertarianism. The town of Hamtramck, Michigan, made headlines in 2023 for being the first US city with a majority Muslim council. Great joy amongst supporters of cultural diversity. But one of the first things they did was to ban displays of LGBT flags on public property on the grounds that homosexuality is forbidden in Islamic law. (I wonder how Green Left activists who are strident in defense of both refugee and LGBT rights manage to reconcile this conflict.)
So do American conservatives and American Christians also have problems with the "liberal enlightened tradition"? Or just Muslims?
I made a remark about a particular situation in North America, that I thought illustrates the tension between liberalism and Islam, and that it must be a tough conflict for refugee advocates to handle. So, tell me in what respect I am mistaken, I'm always open to correction.
I edited my previous post,so have a Luke.
Most migrants are economic type migrants,who regard their Islam as a personal religion, separate from a countries secular law. Most "Muslim countries" have secular law.
The only tension is the same as between US liberals and conservatives,so why single out migrant Muslims? Ask yourself your motivation for that and what info leads you to believe migrants are extreme in their interpretation of Islam?
It's not tough for most migrants religionwise. No more than for an orthodox christian.Whats tough sometimes is the stereotyped clichéd hackneyed information that liberals like yourself say. Just like your post. Implying we are inferior or backwards.
India has also absorbed and practices Western style democracy, it's often noted that it's the 'world's largest democracy.' No doubt there are many social activists and movements who campaign against caste barriers.
Quoting Swanty
Your question is inappropriately parsed. In any case I wasn't referring to 'most Muslims'. I said there is sometimes a tension between Islamic principles and Western liberal values. I gave the example of Hamtramck Michigan where a council mainly comprising Muslim members banned the Pride Flag. My point was mainly to address the question of tolerance, and what it means to tolerate an attitude that is itself not committed to tolerance.
And I keep saying no more tension than that between western conservatives and liberals.
So why use one example to highlight this mythical media boosted tension? And then obfuscate by saying "not most Muslims".
So what's the problem with religious people not wanting to be forced to display a pride flag?
Aren't conservatives Christians of the same mindset?
Sure! 100%. I really do understand the issues that conservatives have with many aspects of modern culture and society. One of the questions in the OP is whether the principles of tolerance and inclusiveness have gone 'too far'. I put case that up as an example of those kinds of tensions. My post was not at all intended as discriminatory against Muslims.
That wasn't the issue. They would not allow others to display the pride flag, banning it from being flown on city property.
Well,I'm trying to be charitable,and I find it discriminatory,especially from a thinking bloke like yourself.
And just to clarify,what do you mean by tolerance and inclusivity have gone to far?
From whose perspective? Secular liberals? So since when are they the arbiters of tolerance and truth?
I haven't seen a trusted media link.
But let's say it's true. How is that representative of Muslims at large? Or migrants? Xenophobia much.
I gave an example that I thought illustrates some of the issues, which was apparently interpreted by yourself as 'discriminatory against Muslims', although it wasn't intended as such.
The fact that you react so violently at the mere mention kind of illustrates the point at issue.
Wow! So now you interpret my reaction as violent!
This is exactly the kind of racist islamaphobic stereotype I was talking about.
Man,the sweet innocent liberal with "superior values" surely loves to resort to totally imaginary stereotypes when pushed.
Your attitude is the problem mate. You don't like Muslims like me telling you how we feel. It offends your "superior" sentiments and imperial worldview.
Then you haven't looked. You are begging for a fight here, seeing hostility where there is none. In that you are playing into the stereotype you supposedly reject.
Especially if you are an American, don't think that everything evolves around your navel.
You didn't engineer the "Arab Spring". You didn't engineer the Hamas operation "Al Aqsa Flood" and the Israeli response to it. And you didn't engineer the war in Ukraine as you didn't engineer the various revolutions that Ukraine has had.
You only participated in them, tried to influence the outcome. The US was one actor among many. And many not the most important actor. Some times not even the most important foreign actor. Engineering means that someone has been prime instigator of something.
Western haughty hubris has simply transitioned from thinking about "the burden of the white man" to this idea of everything bad happening in the World somehow happening because of the West (and especially the US). In this totally (and unintentionally) arrogant way this idea sidelines totally the actual actors in the countries and in the regions where the conflicts happen and overemphasize your own importance. People and countries are either poor victims or then henchmen of the West actions, not independent actors with their own objectives.
I think this idea is perfectly shown in two very different commentators, namely in the arguments of John Mearsheimer and Noam Chomsky. Mersheimer starts with his theory of great powers and simply disregard domestic politics of the nations themselves. He actually has said this quite clearly himself. Now, let's think about this: would it be reasonable to disregard domestic politics when it comes to the US foreign policy? Is "the blob" really so independent of US domestic politics? That would be strange, but somehow not strange when it's other countries. Where Mearsheimer sees a chess game, others might not see just a game between other powers. But why should Mearsheimer care about what Putin thinks about internal politics and the situation of Russia, when he has his theory of great power competition to explain everything?
Noam Chomsky disregards foreign actors in another way: he sees as his role as an intellectual to criticize US foreign policy and leaves the critique of other countries to "the dissidents" of these countries. Again just like with Mersheimer there's a problem when Chomsky then explains the origins of some conflict or war from this viewpoint. It totally sidelines that local actors, other non-US actors and their agenda and thus the explanation is in the end that everything as a result of US involvement. Yet it is obvious that in many cases these conflict would happen with or without US involvement.
Yet the real reason is that both Mearsheimer and Chomsky sell what people want to hear. They don't want to hear a confusing story about events they know little about where the US and other powers come to do their own thing.
Quoting Swanty
I've read that one, have it in my bookshelf. However, don't think that this is solely something that the West does. The unipolar moment has already gone.
Your just backtracking,obfuscatingand taking no responsibility for your mistakes and ignorance.
It's obvious you know very little about Muslims,Islam or realities on the ground.
Yours is media hogwash which appeases your western superiority narrative.
Another anti religious liberal displays his exenophobia and anxiety to stereotype when under pressure.
Yes the great "liberal " weapon when confronted withTruth,run and censor!
Democracy Song by Leonard Cohen
[i]It's coming through a hole in the air,
From those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
That this ain't exactly real
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don't pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin'
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men
O baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
The river's going to weep
And the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.[/i]
I'm not American.
I do agree with you in saying that we shouldn't ignore domestic policies of colonised countries,or use western imperialism as a cop out for the corruption of eastern governments.
I 100% agree that colonised countries took western money and used this to oppress their own lower and muddle classes,and enrich themselves.They bear responsibility for that.
When I talk about the ongoing imperialism I said Europe AND the US,with the US and UK being the prime movers of weaponry and economic oppression. And this imperialism is only achieved with the tacit approval of the ruling class of the imperialised country.
Chomsky and merscheimer are academics/experts pimping off handringing and criticising US policy without the full world picture.
But my bottom line is the west is still the main instigator and supplier of weapons and money for conflict and world economic trade conflict.
You can't dispute that.
And just for full clarity,I regard Russia as European as well.
Is this a jokey play on words or are you a New Zealander?
Youll find that the only bigotry allowed here on the forum is religious bigotry.
I wasn't comparing the US and the Taliban, I was pointing out that the US [I]did[/I] attempt to set up a liberal democracy in Afghanistan, as well as a domestic military capable of defending it, spending 20 years and hundreds of billions in the process.
That military collapsed on contact with the enemy and routed and domestic support for democracy never became particularly strong.
The early Cold War solution to the Taliban and their refusal to deliver up Al Qaeda would have been to back the more secular Northern Alliance, made up of various minority groups, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, etc. This was indeed the initial US strategy in terms of deposing the Taliban, and it worked great, driving them out of power mostly through the use of US airpower with a few forward observers on the ground.
The US could have backed that group, encouraged some sort of stable power sharing structure, and offered to provide them with the support they needed to maintain control of the military situation. Then they'd have leverage over them they could use to push women's rights, liberalization, etc.
Perhaps this would have worked better (it seems unlikely to have worked worse). Korea was a repressive dictatorship when the US was first propping it up after all. Maybe it wouldn't have. Iran is probably the key counter example here.
American values make it hard to use America's massive military supremecy. Could America stop the Houthis from firing missiles at shipping? Sure, that country is already starving and in crisis. A 19th century style punitive campaign that knocks out its power plants, water system, and port infrastructure could be done in a weekend, or the US Navy could simply stop letting the aid shipments the country relies on in. Would this really be a better option though?
The difficulty is that bad actors will leverage Western reluctance to use force, which is why you can have a country relying on aid ships to sustain itself willing to fire on shipping, or Iran willing to send proxies to rain rockets down on US bases even as it is virtually defenseless to punitive retaliation. But any sort of military conflict that tries to minimize civilian losses is extremely difficult and it becomes vastly more difficult if one also wants to engage in democratic nation building.
Do violent conquests sometimes eventually benefit the subject populace? It certainly seems it has happened in history, e.g. Roman colonization of Britain and other northern European areas. But those seem far more the exception than the rule. And even there, the benefits accrued to the descendents of the Gauls, etc., who would come to identify as Romans, not to those in the first generation, who were subject to the pillaging, looting, and slave taking of the initial Roman conquest (not that they weren't subject to this in their own wars already though).
Whether the "Western" traditions are better than others is open to debate. Overall, I think yes. In many ways other cultural attitudes surpass more Western ideals. Undoubtedly there is an exchange where one set of views benefits another and so they assimilate or replace.
All cultural traditions have certain political prohibitions and taboos. Where the 'better' cultural traditions seem to excel is in how the breaking of these 'regulations' is handled.
Societies that expel or annihilate those speaking out against them generally fall. We need a Diogenes or a some form of courtly jester to humiliate us. I leave you with a poem I wrote some years ago:
Rompa Stompa
Aristotle chortles mimetic
a parody of a witless lick-spittle lampooned
comedy sculpts its laughter crafter
un-mastering the mastery of the masterly majesty.
Jesters gesture to the King
satire dripping they prance and fling
their sullied words in simian farce
un-mastering the mastery of their masterly majesty.
Chaplin clowns around his silent circus
flagellants of foolery slapped with wit sticks
raucously erupting Bacchus takes a bow
un-mastering the mastery of our masterly majesty.
Heads crack open with screams
beams split faces bringing to knees
the lesser man mocked and defrocked
un-mastered the master is regally flogged.
I'm English born,Indian,Pakistani,Zimbabwean,Iranian heritage.
I've seen plenty of secular bigotry and xenephobia here.
I don't think it is actually secular bigotry. It is just that we are in a philosophy forum, and philosophy itself has always confronted religion.
There are threads on Christianity. I can't remember if there is any regarding Islam. I took part in them with my deepest respectful behaviour. I even discovered Kazantzakis thanks to Alkis Piskas. My image of Jesus changed to better, but religion still has complex features to my understanding. If you want to start a thread about a religious topic, I don't think you would have issues. But be open to receiving criticism!
Philosophy does confront religion,but can also back it up. There are religious philosophers.
I'm very critical of many thelogians,because of their political bigotry.
I can take criticisms of aspects of religious thought,but liberalism is itself a dominant religious like narrative,and displays intolerance towards any criticism of LGBTQ or western values.
Are western values beyond criticism?
And why is liberalism the arbiter of truth?
That is true, especially if we view Russia (Soviet Union) being an European and Western country. Although even this is starting to change as many countries are having their own weapons industries.
From the Cold War division we are witnessing just how countries that technically are allies of the US are supporting different sides in conflicts as in Libya and Sudan. In the Ukrainian war the Turkish Bayraktar drones, Iranian attack drones and North Korean ammunitions are there alongside the Western and Russian weapon systems. And the first Congo War has been dubbed the Africa's first World War and the Second Congo war as the Great African war as a multitude of African nations backed one side or the other. That few people know about the First and Second Congo War that killed over five million people tells how our focus on the West blinds us and how dominant the Mearsheimer/Chomsky etc focus entirely on the US and the West is. There simply isn't any narrative of Western involvement stirring up Congo conflict, only the historical reasons of European colonialism and Cold War US support for Zaire. Those reasons don't tell how a small country as Rwanda that had just experienced it's own genocidal civil war then attacks Zaire in 1996.
This is totally different from the era of Cecil Rhodes and the time when the Hilaire Belloc declared "Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not." During the Cold War the conflicts could be seen as part of the Superpower struggle with usually the other Superpower backing the side fighting the ally of the other one. Now it's simply wrong to assume that these conflicts are some kind of struggle between China and the US and their proxies, even if we clearly see an anti-US block forming with now North Korean troops fighting in Europe.
We can be critical of the actions what the West does, yet we shouldn't make up these narratives where everything is about us or that the West hasn't done anything correctly.
I do agree,we shouldn't absolve non western nations for instigating conflicts or minimise their role in economic thuggery.
Chomsky et al are just goofballs who hide the different actors involved.
But if we look at the finance required for these types of actions,then the UK,the US,Russia,china,Saudi arabia,Iran etc always have a hand in weapons sales and political support.
I'm very critical of the oil rich states as well as the west.
With regard to your comment about Cecil Rhodes,well the west still has world banking,which is like a maxim gun.
And that is quite a mixed lot. So yes, there is the arms dealer to be found. And the country willing to play the "Great game". But as your list shows, those aren't just Western powers.
Quoting Swanty
The financial sector is the last remnant of the British Empire still working for the UK. And Wall Street is still dominant. When the current global monetary system collapses, that might also change. That might happen in a few years time or after several decades. Who knows, but in the end it will collapse as people and countries will pile debt onto more debt until they cannot.
When and where has this been stated by anyone here?
It's not just western powers,but it's dominated by western finance and military force.
The US has military bases all round the world.
And to be frank,the military industrial complex comprises the evil cooperation of west and east to economically oppress and suppress people all round the world.
The problem is militant capitalism,led by Europe and it's British colony,the US.
Just read this thread,and the supposed superiority of western "values".
Western values include war,economic oppression,imperialism and broken families.
Precisely, western values and liberalism are highly criticised and discussed on TPF. It is obvious that you are a new member. Wait, and you will see.
I have followed TPF as a non member for years, so yours is pretty patronising, and shows lack of comprehension/insight.
People pay lip service to critiqueing western values but the conclusion is always they are superior and the arbiter of other values.
There is no denying this, look at the title,
responses and OP of this thread for god's sake!
And now pays more in servicing it's debt than in puts into it's military spending.
That means it's on the beaten path to lose it's position. And it can always retreat back to isolationism and create the huge vortex of a power struggle when it leaves. We have heard this over and over again, how the US is pivoting to Asia.
And do notice it made the attempt to have military bases in Central Asia after 9/11. Not only Afghanistan, but several other -stans had US bases, Tajikistan even having both US and Russian bases. Now there are none. The US has totally withdrawn from Central Asia and the Russia enjoys dominance over there. This just shows that likely the US "empire" has seen it's pinnacle of it's power perhaps and is on the way out. Just how many decades this withdrawal takes is the real question. And the likely outcome is that nothing will replace it.
Quoting Swanty
I think war and imperialism have been quite universal in human society, actually. Not something that the West enjoys a monopoly.
But there is one thing hypocritical in our thinking of "the West". And that is that we have this habit of announcing other non-European cultures to be "Western" if they are successful. Hence many people see Japan as "Western" because Japan has been a successful industrialized country. Yet this change cannot seemingly be seen as a result of Japan losing WW2 and the US democratizing the state as the transformation goes back to the Meiji restauration. Similarly for South Korea it took roughly 30 years from the Korean war to become a democracy and again the development is something that South Koreans did themselves. "Westernization" has usually been something of a response to European colonialism and imperialism, as in the case of the transformation of the Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey with Kemalism (which now has ended with the current leader of Türkiye).
(Kemal Atatürk in Gallipoli in 1915. The modernization of Kemalism was a response to Western power and the defeat of the "Sick man of Europe" in WW1, just like in the case of the arrival of US warships were for Japan in 1853.)
And naturally the huge transformation of China that has happened in our lifetime is the obvious example where we simply cannot talk of modernization as "Westernization". I remember the time when China was referred to being similar in economic size to the Netherlands. Technology and consumerism simply aren't some Western, but something simply universal and we should understand it in such a way.
(How Shanghai has changed in 30 years)
Quoting Swanty
Europe and the US don't control either China or India, which have been in this Century the economic drivers of the global economy. Americans mainly consume and even if Trump wants the industry to come back, it won't. The UK is the perfect example of European deindustrialization as the country isn't even producing steel anymore. US economic power reached it's zenith at the end of WW2 when every other global competitor was either destroyed, bankrupt or attempting the ruinous experiment of Marxism-Leninism. From there it's been a steady decline, something irreversible as the decline of the UK after it's Empire collapsed.
I feel we are just restating our views on this, and we do agree on some matters.
To pivot a little, I would say you are underestimating the power of European/American banking and it's allies.
America's debt is just a way of fleecing the American labour and business sectors to finance it's bankers and elites.
The banking system includes non western allies,but it's all capitalist hegemony,enforced by violence.
Not a western only thing,but lead by the west,the worlds biggest arms dealers and bankers. Without doubt.
Historically, as far as I can tell, it usually was either internally induced or an external government exerted brutality on them to get them in linethe latter being, obviously, immoral.
If I grant your point, then that just means that it is really hard to use sheer force to subjugate a population to fundamentally different valuesdoes that mean we should just leave them be? I dont think so.
Most of the cases, of which I can think of, the vast majority of the people would actually want the revolution, but they do not have the means (like North Korea, Afghanistan, etc.); and in some cases most of them wouldnt because that would not be in their own interests (like in India). Sometimes you just have to force people to do the right thing, which is what the entire prison system is based off ofno?
Theres nothing about a representative republic that prevents this; nor why would it? What do you mean by aggressivethats a very vague term here.
Its not that he doesnt care: its that he cares more about Americaas it should be. Why would, e.g., Spain care more about the US than itself?!?
This can be true, but isnt always the case. I think you are denying my OP on the grounds of practicality, when it was meant in principle.
Do you think theres a certain point where the Nation would have to use conquest, as a last resort? It seems to me that it is possible that all these alternative measures you spoke of, which certainly should be deployed first could fail and conquest ends up being the final resort.
I view national conquesti.e., imperialismas it relates to inferior societies like violence as it relates to evil perpetrators: violence is a just last resort, just like conquest is a just last resort. Do you agree with that? Otherwise, you are saying, analogously, that violence is not a resort at all.
I can see it being impractical most of the time, if that is what you mean.
It sounds like you dont believe in personifying the State; and I would just briefly note that in a representative republic you have tothe government represents, to some sufficient extent, the people. You cant separate any member of the government, or the government in totality, from the people in proper republics.
Thats incredibly immoral. Thats like saying that an individual should only secure their own power and advance their own interests as much as they canwhat about caring about other people? What about moral law?
This is so obviously wrong, though. You are saying, e.g., that an nation shouldnt interfere with mass genocide in another nation. Its nonsense.
:lol:
Ehhh, then I submit to you that you should be amoral: dont meddle into matters of right or wrong behaviorbecause you dont think there is such a thing. I dont know why you would even care if North Korea is committing mass genocide because you dont believe they are doing anything wrong.
I don't think it frequently works historically. I am not denying that most of the historical examples are catastrophic failures; but the OP is pointing out, in principle, that imperialism is not the issue itself. What you are noting is not that imperialism is wrong, but that it is often impractical to try to conquer another nation for the sake of Imperialism (if done in a morally permissible way). I am not saying we go in and conquer each other for dumb reasons or when it is highly impractical to do so; but we should have the disposition that it is our duty to try to subject our better values on worse nations in every practical way possible.
The in-group is more important than the out-group. Each group has to protect its own viability first and foremost.
E.g., if I can only save my mother or a stranger, then I go for my mother; because my familye.g., the in-groupis more important to me than the out-group.
This completely sidestepped what I said.
They are a different form of nationalism.
Theres nothing confusing about it: nationalism is just the idea that one should have a sense of pride and commitment to their nation over other nations.
I think the US could have wiped out the Taliban, just like Al Quaeda, but they gave up because most Americans dont believe in Imperialism; and, to some extent, I sympathize with it. Afterall, the US has so many problems that they dont address because they are too busy meddling in other nations affairsbut this is irrelevant to the OP. If your nation has glaring issues that need to be addressed, then address them first before trying to expand ones values to other nations.
1. North Korea: they collect the women to make pleasure squads and it is considered an honor there (to be a sex slave to the elites).
2. Iran: they legalized a form of temporary marriage so that men can pay parents to sell their daughters into temporary sex slavery. It happens all the time there: its a sex slavery version of arranged temporary marriage that is sanctioned by and considered normal in that society.
3. China: they do not prosecute and they actively encourage the sexual abuse of female North Korean defectors. Their societies views them as vulnerable scum that do not align with the goals of the Communist Party, and so they do what they like with them.
Need I go on?
Actually, Europeans usually have pretty good countries: I dont know why you roped them into it. All my examples have been in the middle east and in Asia. I am sure, though, theres probably some bad apples in Europe as well.
Most of Islam is still what Christianity looked like 500-1000 years ago; so, yeah, I am not generally that supportive of the religion because it hasnt been domesticated by secular morals yet (enough). Before you quote me out of context, I recognize that there are peaceful Muslims, some of which I know, and I am not saying we should inhibit their ability to peacefully exercise their religion.
Christianity got domesticated more than Islam so far, but they used to be by-at-large just as bad. E.g., wanting the combination of church and state, persecuting different religious sects, persecuting homosexuals, hell-bent on Crusades, etc.
But do they surpass Western culture in the areas that really matter? I don't think so. A representative republic, with liberties and freedoms, where everyone is able to practice what they want, in a merit-based economy, so long as they don't violate other peoples' rights is by far the best culture to live in. I think some of the better aspects of other cultures that you may be talking about, like eating healthy, is something which definitely needs to be worked on in Western society but isn't a part of the core cultural values.
I don't really disagree with your post here: I think we have to be careful when using violence to impose values on other people...but I am saying it is necessary sometimes and a duty we have.
You see bob, it's easy to tell you don't have much insight into Muslim countries or Muslim migrants.
Most Muslim countries have secular type laws, maybe mixed in with a few personal islamic marriage laws or something.
You should know this if your judging middle eastern type countries.
It's really only a few countries like iran &Saudi who have more shariah laws, but still on the ground a lot of Iranians and Saudis don't believe in shariah law. Neither do I. Shariah law is political theology.
You don't realise how many Muslims on the ground believe in peace and economics. Your ideology and disinformation blinds you to this and makes you utter uncivilised bigotry, which is truly ironic!
I do believe they are doing something wrong according to my own (non-realist/non-universal) moral framework, but I don't necessarily think that should be a or the (only) determining factor in deciding to go to war with another country.
I'm a social constructivist, so yes morality would typically only apply within a certain group, within the group that develloped those morals. But typically there's a dialogue between groups/countries too, and you get trade agreements, treaties, pacts, allies and enemies etc etc.... that would be the geo-political analogue for the social contract, but then between states instead of merely within the group. And so I think justification of wars should be evaluatted within those geo-political conventions, and not solely on the bases of the morals of a particular in-group (like you seem to be doing as a moral realist).
One will become president of the US in a few months!
Quoting Bob Ross
What is you are a citizen of one of those inferior nations? Why must we have a vested interest in its flourishing. How does this differ from cultural relativism?
Quoting Bob Ross
What is the measure of "substantially better"? Which is substantially better, a theocracy or a emocratic republic? If your values are based on some version of the will of God, then theocracy Trumps democracy. Unless, of course, the administration is playing both sides. What we end up with is where the US is clearly headed plutocracy.
Quoting Bob Ross
While I share your concern with the human good, there has always been a tension in Liberalism between the human good and what individuals may regard as their own good. Some regard the notion of a 'human good' as antithetical to the rights of the individual.
Quoting Bob Ross
For one, because of the consequences. Two, because supremacy, whether it is some version of Western supremacy or some other, has more to do with power and domination than with ideology. Three, because ideology itself poses a grave threat when it is imposed through action. The lines between persuasion and coercion, no matter now noble one's intentions, blur whenever there is an attempt to move from an ideal to an actuality via political action.
Because it would require them to die and sacrifice.
Nothing vague about aggression. One country attacks another - as you propose they should. The population is usually not asked whether it wants to go to war; it's told (often untruthfully) why it should or must go to war.
Quoting Bob Ross
Oh, he doesn't care about the US, either. If he's convinced you otherwise, I've overestimated your acuity.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm rejecting it on all of the grounds I listed in my first post. If your principles cause innocents to be killed or bereaved, I reject your principles.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'll let you know when I've seen the results of the first five resorts. ATM, no.
I am open-minded: give me some examples of countries which are officially Islamic that have freedom of religion. I can't think of a single one that actually will not persecute you for exercising a different religion or being homosexual; except for countries that have a separation of church and state.
If there is no objective morality, then your ethical theory isnt really useful. It doesnt matter if you believe that they are doing something wrong but not in the sense that it is actually wrong.
Is that like moral cultural relativism?
It sounds like, contrary to your previous statements, you are a moral realist. Moral cultural relativism is a form of moral realismalthough I dont think it works.
Trump is not a supporter of sex offenses. He definitely engages in immoral sex with prostitutes, but thats not a sex offenseunless you are suggesting that they were coerced into doing it, instead of it being their normal job.
Cultural relativism is a form of moral realism such that moral judgments are evaluated relative to the objective legal or moral law of the society-at-hand; whereas being vested in the national-interests is just the idea that you should be interested in your nation prospering so that you can too.
A meritocracy guided by secular values (e.g., of rights, liberties, etc.).
Arguably, it is already a plutocracy and an oligarchy.
I facially agree; because I think we should think about it as having rights just to let everyone pursue their own conception of what is good; but, upon deeper reflection, this is utterly self-undermining. In order to argue for this, we would have to claim that it is actually good to let people pursue < >, and this implies that we have not extracted all of ethics out of politics.
The human good is what grounds, in my theory, why it is actually good to let people pursue their own good. It is just.
:lol:
Yes, and you need that. This is exactly the absurdity with hyper-liberalism: it is hyper-tolerant. Are you really going to say that Hitler didnt have inferior values to Ghandi? Are you really going to say that North Korea has at least on par values as the US? This is utter nonsense. Yes, to some extent, we must admit that we have a duty towards what is good; and that includes stopping really bad societies from doing really bad things.
All I got out of this is that it would be difficult to implement; which I do not deny.
Firstly, people get told to go to war no matter what in a republicthats not unique to my position here. If my country goes to war, then I could legitimately get draftedare you saying thats bad too?
Secondly, the idea is that, just like a citizen should want equal rights for their fellow citizens (and to sacrifice potentially for it), so should they with helping people out from another country by taking them over or at least having influence there to help out.
What makes you think that? I get that he is egoistic, but you dont think he cares at all about the US?
So war, for you then, is always impermissible. Got it.
I don't claim to understand your "moral realism," so maybe you can help me out here.
You have suggested we have duty to liberate the citizens of North Korea. Is that purely because we believe we have the status of moral agents, and a duty to carry out acts we deem moral? Or is it because North Koreans also have the status of being moral agents, and that's why we have a duty to them?
The answer to those questions would clarify for me whether we are supposed to consider North Koreans members of the in-group or the out-group. If they are moral agents toward whom we might have a duty, that sounds like we ought to consider them in-group. But if they are out-group, why would we have any duty to liberate them? ? I'll leave you to decide whether you want to defend the idea that they are out-group relative to "us" ? the West or whatever ? and not moral agents at all.
When you've decided you don't understand the question, I'll happily rephrase it.
P.S.
Forgot to ask, why we should spend blood and treasure liberating members of the out-group. How is that putting in-group needs first?
I'm saying people don't vote for it. Quoting Bob Ross
If you convince them of what they should want, they'll vote differently.
Quoting Bob Ross
Everything he's ever said and done publicly.
Quoting Bob Ross
A war of aggression, for me, is always immoral.
I wish you did get it.
He is a sex offender, and not because he engages is consensual acts that some might find offensive.
Quoting Bob Ross
You seem to have missed the point. If your nation is one of those:
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, you seem to have missed the point. A meritocracy guided by secular values may be your preference but others may hold to religious values as superior, that it is religious values that have elevated us above the savagery, cruelty, and viciousness of secularism.
Quoting Bob Ross
It has been at times but there have been correctives such as ant-trust laws and regulations. With Musk in Trump's pocket we are headed in a direction much more severe then what we have now.
Quoting Bob Ross
Exactly my point!
Quoting Bob Ross
Do you mean something like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Quoting Bob Ross
In your theory. You should not let your theory blind you to the very real tensions between the individual and the society. One troubling example: the rights of the woman versus the rights of the fetus versus the interest of the state and the country.
Quoting Bob Ross
You do not know that we could take over North Korea without grave consequences. This points to a problem with ideological wish fulfillment.
Quoting Bob Ross
There is a difference between liberalism and "hyper-liberalism". The right to national self-determinism is not hyper-liberalism. The use of power and domination to get a sovereign nation to conform to your ideology is hyper-imperialism.
Quoting Bob Ross
Interesting example since Gandhi was opposed to the very thing you say is needed - power and domination. I agree that toleration should have its limits, but the problem remains as to what ought to be tolerated? And here we encounter the kinds of differences of opinion and values that is not covered by Hitler vs Gandhi. Should gay marriage. be tolerated? Hitler would say no. I don't know what Gandhi would have said.In any case, there is no clear line between tolerance and intolerance, and that is obscured when you posit extremes.
Quoting Bob Ross
Do you not get that the lines between persuasion and coercion can blur when it comes to implementing an ideology? Consider communist ideologies and what has been regarded as needed to achieve them. An ideology and what has been done to achieve it must be considered together.
A combination of elements for other societies around the world could easily be on par or even better.
One such example would be how well other countries around the world have managed to separate religion from state (China and Japan had to create a concept for Religion to talk about monotheistic traditions in the late 19th century). The west is pretty much detached from ancient traditions having had them wiped out by Romans and the Dark Ages. In Australia the culture has survived in spite of the attempts of erasing it during colonization. These are extremely rich and useful traditions that are going to change the face of education in the immediate future.
I am by no means stating that Western culture is anymore destructive or authoritarian than any other. I think it has a lot going for it. I have readily stated that some cultures are better than others. The difficulty is in showing how we can evaluate this in any objective manner.
I created a thread sometime ago regarding the premise of 'better languages' and it was met with equal hostility. Some people are just not willing to talk about such ideas.
I do think European Culture is probably better than US Culture simply because it is not anywhere near as homogenous as US culture. European culture is a patchwork of various traditions and ideas that have rubbed up against each other, and contended with each other (often violently), for millennia.
The biggest issue is defining what is meant by Western Culture and whether or not the term is at all useful.
Is supremacy, nationalism and imperialism necessarily 'bad'. I think not. Empires do good and bad, and possibly the 'good' may simply be a default outcome, rather than a purposeful aim, by constructing infrastructures (physical or abstract) that lead to overall societal goods.
There is no actual objective wrong, only conventional wrongs, yes.... that's just how it is descriptively. Usefull for what, to be able to declare war?
Quoting Bob Ross
It is relative between cultures sure, but not for individuals. They are beholden to the morality of their group... so it's not anything goes/up the the individuals choice, if that's what you're worried about.
Quoting Bob Ross
It's neither totally realist nor anti-realist I think. Morals are very real in that they exist as conventions for people to follow within certain groups, and are therefor not merely subjective expressions or choices of individuals... but they are also not the things you go looking for and can find as objective facts in the world. We create them over time.
All persons are moral agents, so both people in the West and North Koreans are moral agents. I would say that (not in all but) in some circumstances moral agents have a duty to help other people; and those people needing of help should also be trying to help themselves too.
In- and out- groups are relativistic and contextual. E.g., someone of another nation is in an out-group to your nation; someone not in your family is in the out-group to your family; etc.
There is not The in-(or out-)group.
No, but they are in-group if you universalize it as all humanity. Then, e.g., aliens would be a part of the out-group.
Because we have a duty to properly respecti.e., be just towardsother persons. This doesnt negate the fact that we, in practicality, have to prioritize our own people over others.
This is straightforwardly a false dilemma. People in out-groups are still people; so they are moral agents.
:lol: ???
It isnt. The point is not to always prioritize the in-group over out-group; but we still have to do it oftentimes. E.g., every time I save a stranger I am putting myself, to some degree, at risk and thusly it is at the detriment of the family. I see your point though: when there are grave consequences of helping the out-group, then we shouldnt. Im fine with that. E.g., I first have a duty to take care of my kids and this conflicts with risking my life to save that stranger from the burning building.
People havent ever voted on when to go to warthats not how republics work Im afraid.
Is going to war with the Nazis to stop the Holocaust a war of aggression? Sure. Is it immoral? Not at all. Explain to me my flaw in reasoning here, without pointing out the red herring that in WW2 the US didnt join until they were attacked (or a more general statement outlining it for other countries and when they joined).
Send me a link to the sex offense that he was charged with, or the reasonable evidence that he should have been convicted (of some sex crime).
And they, my friend, would be objectively wrong. I dont care about peoples opinionsthis theory is governed by facts.
:smile:
There are certainly tensions and dilemmas to be explored; but thats how rights work. A right is absolute.
Most of the dilemma revolve, like abortion, around people not understanding how rights actually work. No, you are not allowed to violate someones right to life to uphold your own right to bodily autonomythats not how rights work.
I never claimed to the contraryyou sidestepped my hypothetical, as noted by underlining it.
Red herring.
Fallacy of the heap. There are clear examples of what is a pond and what is a lake: I dont have to give an exact line where one becomes the other. Stopping the Nazis is a clear example of what should be done, and stopping people from eating Vanilla ice cream is a clear example of what shouldnt be done.
Quoting Wikipedia - E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump
That's what I've been trying to tell you: democratic nations don't "take over" other countries to fix those other countries' morality. It would have to be done by either coercing or misleading the people: i.e., by undemocratic means. So, what superior values are you imposing on another non-democratic government? Quoting Bob Ross
Who attacked the Nazi regime just to improve its morals?
And why do you think shifting the subject in every exchange is going to convince anyone of your own moral rectitude?
I know I'm not the only one who chuckled when they read this.
Yeah, but others haven't got the Maxim gun. That's the unstated premise underlying Bob's fascist fantasy.
Thanks for the response, Bob.
Im aware thats the theory of republicanism. But it cannot be shown to be the case in practice.
I suggest the opposite is the case: you cannot unify any member of government with any of the people it rules over. Its impossible for someone to represent people shes never met, for example, and the wants and needs of the people she has met shift to such an extent that to keep track of them all would be impossible. People are only nominally represented by politicians.
It is immoral. Im not saying the state should do that, only that they cannot do otherwise.
I guess it depends on your own theory of state formation, whether it was voluntary or of conflict, because it outlines the nature of these institutions. Did everyone gather together to form the state, as with a social contract? Or did the state arise out of conquest and confiscation, erecting a mechanism for some men to rule over others?
Thats not what I was saying. Imperialism is the expansion of power and jurisdiction. One cannot give aid by establishing a permanent institution and ruling over the victims.
Vietnam tried this in Cambodia. The Vietnamese took out Pol Pot and disbanded the Khmer Rouge, which was good, but then it occupied the country for a decade, which was bad.
Imperialism suggests occupation and the expansion of power. Implying that this is an act to save victims is nonsense.
The caste system was officially outlawed in 1950 but it still persists in certain parts of India. From what I understand, it is highly controversial in India. It is wrong to say that it persists everywhere in India.
The Taliban is a wicked force and promotes wicked policies, but I wouldn't say that Afghan society is degenerate. There was pre-Taliban Afghanistan.
We have Trump's admission that he grabs women by the pussy.
27th woman accuses Trump of sexual misconduct
On Tuesday, May 12, 2023, the Manhattan jury of nine men and three women found the former president liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
Quoting Bob Ross
Please cite those facts. You like to throw around terms such as 'objectively'. I know you will not agree but values are not facts. The fact is, however, that the belief in equality comes from Christianity not secular sources.
Quoting Bob Ross
What does this mean? Do you think this stands as a reasoned argument?
In his recent book constitutional scholar Jeffery Rosen argues that the term 'the pursuit of happiness' as used by the Founders traces back before the philosophers of Liberalism to the classical philosophers such as Aristotle and Cicero. The pursuit of happiness is deliberative and public minded. It is not self interested but a matter of the 'common good' and 'general welfare'.
You have got it backwards. The right to the pursuit of happiness is not the right to do whatever you think will make you happy or even the right to do whatever you want as long as it does not impinge on the rights of other. It is not good because it is an individual's right. It is good because it is in pursuit of the good.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. the fact is that the dilemma of abortion does not resolve. It is a stand off of conflicting rights.
Quoting Bob Ross
Your hypothetical? Do you mean "without grave consequences"? The actions taken by one nation against another should not be based on improbable hypotheticals.
Quoting Bob Ross
Once again you make my point. When dealing with the question of what should and should not be tolerated the problem lies with what is between the extremes. Do you think that real world problems are like the difference between stopping the Nazis and stopping people from eating vanilla ice cream?
His bivalent extremism puts me in the position of appearing to defend religious values over secular values. He has much more in common with religious extremists than he is aware of.
And pay for that Superpower military, which is crucial. That now the debt service cost more than the whole defense budget is telling. And there's absolutely no reason why the country won't continue to use it's credit card from USD's global role.
Quoting Bob Ross
But still part of nationalism. And this is why people will get upset of a troll-like thread called "in support of Western supremacy, Nationalism and Imperialism". Perhaps a similar thread like "in support of of Marxism-Leninism, the good aspects of the Marxist ideology" would be for someone reasonable, but for others it would be deliberate trolling. Yet someone could post a thread like that and tell us of all the positive aspects of the ideology, and there are in PF many who consider themselves Marxists. Where he (or she) would go astray is to deny the negative sides of this totalitarian ideology and go for the insanely ludicrous idea of "if it weren't for Stalin". Or Mao, or Pol Pot. Luckily (in my view) the Marxists here do understand the complexity and the perils of totalitarianism and I respect that.
So no, Bob, you simply cannot bypass the ugly aspects of ultranationalism and jingoism as "a different form of nationalism" and then contnue talk about it positively. Yes, I've read your OP, you state in the end that:
Quoting Bob Ross
Well, a lot of of Marxists won't deny the millions that Marxism-Leninism killed, but the argue (perhaps like you) that the negative aspects aren't intrinsic to the ideology. That it's just, well, as you say when it goes too radical. But in that case, the whole ideology is against democracy, portrays other human beings as the enemy and justifies a violent revolution to be justified, as least as the 19th Century ideas went.
Hence similarly you saying that it's nationalism "just gone wrong" and admit it has negative aspects, or as you said, that ultranationalism is "something different", I don't buy that. You have to define just what you find to be positive and what ought to be excluded because you do have such negative aspects in the term of nationalism.
Except the US didn't go to war to stop the Holocaust.
The brilliant mr A. Hitler in his enormous wisdom declared war on the United States after Imperial Japan attacked the US. The holocaust was something that was exposed only after the war was fought in Germany and Poland, even if hints of the final solution were to be seen earlier.
Have the historical facts straight, Bob.
I never claimed to the contrary: I even predicted this point in my response! With all due respect, please take your time in reading my responses; because we are both wasting our time if either or both of us are skimming each others posts and addressing irrelevant or already addressed points. I presented you with a counter example to your own, and addressed this already:
Theres no trolling intended: there are good forms of nationalism, imperialism, and supremacy. Liberals just get butt-hurt when people use the proper terminology, because they conflate it with the bad forms.
That title would, either, suggest trolling. Trolling is when you are purposefully messing with people: you seem to think it is when someone makes a controversial statement. I have no problem with someone creating a thread titled in support of Maoism, even though I disagree, as long as they are trying to have a productive and legitimate conversation about itthats the whole point of freedom of speech.
This is an equivocation. If I say I like gala apples, then it is not valid to critique honey crisp apples as a retort: you cannot say, as you analogously are now, that I like all apples because I like gala apples. This is nonsense.
What??? Patriotism is not anti-democratic. I dont know why you would suggest all forms of nationalism, like Patriotism, are against democracy.
This is what he said:
That is not a sex crime to grab a woman by the pussy if she lets you do it.
Either way, I see your point and recant my statement:
He was also, upon reading in to it, found guilty of rape under the common definition but not charged because the definition of rape in that state required the unconsensual penetration to be with a penis and not fingers. So, yeah, Trump definition is a sex offendergood point Foolos4.
Traditionally, yes, it comes from Christianity. I am not sure how deep we want to get into this, but I am a neo-Aristotelian; so I believe that the chief good is to be a eudaimon because this is what is required to realize and preserve the objective, internal goods to mindhood; and this is just to say that one must be virtuous, in the pre-modern sense, as it relates to the natural functions of the mind. One of those virtues, and the highest of them, is Justice. To be just is to respect a thing for what it deserves relative to what it is (or does); and, so, personsi.e., beings with a free and rational willcannot be treated as a mere means but also simultaneously an end-in-themselves. This is what rights are grounded in, and this is also true for Christianity; insofar as it borrows heavily from Aristotles ethics.
Objective goods are internal goods, in that Aristotelian sense. I will leave you, for now, with an easy example: the good farmer. The fact that a farmer is good at farming is not hypothetical: it is not relative to the beliefs or desires you have about it, nor that I have about it. This is a form of objective goodness: if you are really a moral anti-realist, then you must deny that there is such a thing as a good farmer, or deny that this sort of objective goodness has any relevance to morality.
I was just affirming your question.
Absolutely; and this goes back to the Aristotelian idea that the state should be trying to facilitate the Human Good. Happiness should really be translated here as eudaimonia.
Oh, I see. Thats not what it means to people in America nor how it is taught. Happiness is used in the modern, non-Aristotelian sense now: you follow your own conception of the goodnot some objective good. You are right, though, to point out that the founding fathers were entrenched, because of their predominant Christian beliefs, in Aristotelian thought.
No, if we only had to the right to be a eudaimon, then we would not have the right, e.g., to eat McDonalds everydaythats not how Aristotle envisioned it.
I can tell you that is certainly not the case; although, like I said, people think that because they dont understand how normative ethics works. You cannot throw someone in front of a train, thereby killing them, to save five people on the tracks: there is not conflict of rights here. Thats not how it works.
Correct. I was never denying this. The OP is trying to tease out that there actually are forms of these views which are permissible, per se.
No, but my point is that we dont have to have an exact formula of what to tolerate to agree that a nation should step in to stop the Nazis. Thats obviously bad enough to go to war over itno?
There is overwhelming evidence that it is upheld in the vast majority of their society. There are tons of crimes reports, and tons not reported, that never get investigated because the police there do not care at all.
Perhaps: I would have to look into it. If it was like Iran, then it was definitely degenerate. However, this sidesteps my point: I was talking about specifically Talibanian rule.
Well, its about the values that she would profess (and hopefully stick to) which people would vote her in for: thats the connect between them that you seem to be missing.
To a certain extent I agree, because I do believe States slowly becoming tyrannical over time; so I see your point there. However, thats one of the main reasons we have guns ..
Look, Jefferson was no dummy: he explicitly stated that a rebellion from time-to-time in a republic is as necessary and good as a storm for the earths ecosystem:
- Jefferson to Madison, January 30, 1787
Thats my boy, Jeff.
Imperialism is a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force. I am just saying that, in giving aid, influencing them into the same values as the West isnt a bad idea. Is that not Imperialistic to you?
You dont think a US version of Iran would be better? I think so.
No, no, no. You missed the point: democratic nations dont go to war at all based off of a votethats not how it works. You are acting like a democratic nation only goes to war if we vote to.
This opens up the discussion to the question: what reasons can a democratic nation go to war, which is despite whatever their citizens think?. I am tacking on one more than you: if another country is doing something really badlike genocide. So, why do you think otherwise? You cant say its because people wouldnt vote for it .
I didnt shift the discussion. Heres what I said:
You said that a war of aggression is always immoral; so I was asking if you think that a war to stop genocide is then immoral? Thats the logical implication of what you said, and I want to see if you are willing to bite that bullet.
True, and I recanted that claim to @Fooloso4: Trump is definitely a sex offender. There's too much evidence to support this for me to overlook.
Then, you have to deny that there is such a thing as a bad farmer.
Morality is useful for knowing what the right thing to do or not do is.
Ok, so it sounds like your view is a form of moral anti-realism; because you are denying that moral judgments express something objective; instead, they are inter-subjective. This is just as meaningless to me as if it were straightforwardly subjective: why should anyone care what some group of people think? It literally doesnt matter, because you are denying that there is anything that actually matters.
Because it is the only set of values that separates church from state; gives people as many equal liberties as possible; has the right to bear arms; and is merit-based (or at least used to be). Any society which is missing some of things is not as good (I would say). Maybe we can disagree on the 2nd amendment; but the others seem obviously better than any alternatives.
The best parts, ironically, of eastern countries are the westernized aspects of itin terms of what really matters politically. Sure, the food may be way better; people may live more healthy lifestyles; etc. But if they dont have basic rights than that doesnt really matterdoes it?
I dont know enough about Japan to comment; but China, really? China sends people with religious beliefs to concentration camps .
Whats survived? I didnt follow.
I am viewing it through an Aristotelian lens, ultimately.
:up:
Interesting, why would diversity make a culture better? I would imagine that a society which is homogeneous and in alignment with the Human Good is the bestnot one which has various opinions on what the Human Good is, nor whether to follow it.
True. I am talking about the core western ideas; like democracy, liberties, rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms (for the US at leastBritain, e.g., can take that L on this one), tolerance, etc.
I have a feeling you are the only one that is going to agree with me on that, lol.
Come on Bob. I think you know better! Not all women let "a star" do it. And to assume ahead of time that they will is a rapist mentality. But I see that you do go on to admit he is a rapist.
Quoting Bob Ross
We need not go so deep to see that an evaluation of religious versus secular values should not ignore beliefs, opinions, and values, that religious and secular values are not wholly separate and distinct, and that without specific examples to evaluate it is a fruitless argument'.
Quoting Bob Ross
If good at farming means producing an abundance of crops then we have one measure by which we might say that someone is a good farmer. But what if he uses an excessive amount to fertilizers and pesticides produce his crop? Is he a good farmer if he disregards the environmental impact? Mono-culture farming may be successful in the short term but disastrous long term. Corporate industrial "factory farms" are very productive but they are not good stewards of the land or good neighbors. Independent farmers cannot compete. Consumers have less choice.
Quoting Bob Ross
Rather than looking to ethical theory we need to look at what is actually going on. And it is not as if there is no dispute on this between those who do understand normative ethics, unless you mean that to understand it is to agree with you.
Quoting Bob Ross
We might agree that there are cases where we should step in, but this ignores the larger question of when we should step in. Should we step in to stop the Russians or the Israelis or Hamas?
Sorry. I missed your change of mind.
To be fair, I responded to Foolos4 right before I sent that to you (: So there is no possible way you would have seen that. The bottom-line is that Trump has done sexually immoral things, for sure. I didn't realize he was actually convicted in court, and got off of a rape charge on a technicality. So that's a fair point Foolos4 was making there.
To be honest, though, I would still vote for Trump over Kamala knowing that. Of course, I do not intent to condone that behavior; but every election is like picking the lesser of the two evils ):
I really wish a philosopher would run for office.
I was just noting that what he said was not an admission that he rapes women. I am not saying he hasnt done, considering the evidence you demonstrated. I think this is a mute point to debate now, since I agree with you on him being a sex offender.
You missed the point: if you are a moral anti-realist, then you cant say there is such a thing as being actually better or worse at farming.
The circumstances can inform our ethical decisions, but theres more to it than that: you cant purely empirically determine what is right and wrong.
On the point I was making, there isnt much dispute. It is uncontroversially true, for the vast majority of ethicists, that politics should be governed by ethics (ultimately). Ethics is about right and wrong behavior afterall.
I agree, but I am trying to take this one step at a time here. You are denying that we should evaluate politics based off of ethics; so we have to start there first.
Note - it was a civil, not a criminal, court. He wasn't found legally guilty, he was found liable and had to pay money.
He might not see it that way. He may believe he is so privileged as to do whatever he wants or so delusional that he thinks all women will welcome him grabbing them by the pussy, but bragging about doing this is an admission that he rapes women.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am not bound by adherence to some particular moral theory. That is your thing. What you said is:
Quoting Bob Ross
but when I give examples of why the claim about being good at farming is problematic, you appeal to a hypothetical, moral anti-realism.
I am not denying that one can be a better or worse farmer, but rather that without saying what it means to be better or worse at farming the point is empty. If you are going to appeal to a fact then you can't ignore the facts that determine whether or not farmer is a good farmer.
Quoting Bob Ross
The question was whether the issue of abortion can be resolved. An appeal to normative ethics has not resolved it. That can be empirically determined.
Quoting Bob Ross
An appeal to ethics gets us nowhere on this issue. Of course it is an ethical issue, but ethicists continue to argue the issue without resolution. The issue of abortion is very much in dispute between ethicists.
The issue cannot be resolved by an appeal to ethics over politics. First, respecting rights is a matter of ethics. Second, whether or not politics should be governed by ethics, the fact is, it is not. That is the political reality. We must deal with things as the are, not in terms of abstract theoretical ideals.
It isn't. Nationalism simply includes ultranationalism and jingoism.
Quoting Bob Ross
And trolls just love to get others butt-hurt, it's the objective.
Quoting Bob Ross
Read carefully. I was talking about Marxism, not patriotism. Marxism-Leninism starts with ideas of violent revolutions, class enemy and the attitude towards other political systems is not veiled in the thinking.
Quoting Bob Ross
Seems you confuse American set of values with Western set of values. Forgot the Church of England? Nordic countries like Norway, Denmark have state religions, Sweden just cut the link in 2000 and in Finland the link to Lutheran Church is quite strong still starting from religion taught in schools. And only a few countries in the World don't permit citizens owning firearms. Then to say that meritocracy happens only in the West sounds quite strange too.
CC: @Foolos4
I was just about to message you both about this. I've been researching it more, and, as you noted, it is civil and not criminal case; and so he was not found guilty of sexual abuse but rather, given the jury found it more likely than not (i.e., >= 51% chance), they found that he probably did it. I don't think this is enough evidence to say he is a rapist, although he may of very well done it. He doesn't have a great character: I think we can all agree on that. It interesting though that Carroll didn't file the suit until 2019 (initially): that's suspect.
Let's be real though: he was found liable for forcible touching and sexual abuse not once, not twice, but three times....so, in all probability, there's something there. Reading through the evidence, there's nothing really solid indicating it happened; so I am thinking I might be missing something. Essentially the evidence was two people she told about it, the Hollywood tape, and defamation evidence (e.g., things he said about her in malice).
I honestly don't think he would get convicted of rape nor sexual abuse in criminal court given that evidence.
Exactly. You're wanting to force democracy on other peoples through undemocratic means, at great cost to both your own population and the one you hope to convert. Quoting Bob Ross
No, it doesn't. If your democratically representative government believes that another nation is doing a great wrong, like genocide, the moral and legal course is through existing treaty organizations, such as the UN, and persuade your fellow signatories, as well your own population to participate in an international intervention.
Quoting Bob Ross
It's how democracies work.
Quoting Bob Ross
It wasn't. The Nazis should have been stopped before they started knocking over the smaller nations around them. Should it have been stopped by force of arms, diplomatic or economic means? By whom? By what right? Consult the treaties and compacts and international laws of the period.
If you want to go back in time and stop them by force before they round up all the mental patients, communists, Jews and Romani, fine. If you expect my help in conquering North Korea, forget it.
I am not denying that ethics should play a role in our evaluation of politics, but without specifics the claim is vacuous. For example, you said you would vote for Trump even if he is a rapist. In this case it would seem that you put political considerations above ethical.
Quoting Bob Ross
Did you miss the link I provided?
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/28/trump-sexual-misconduct-allegations-women
It strains credibility to the breaking point to think that this many women just made things up. The fact that he has never been criminally charged does [correction: not mean] that there is not ample evidence that he is a sex offender.
I will put this in non-legal terms:
Would you leave him alone with your wife or mother or daughter?
I can't be certain, but I think there was a good chance he would have been convicted. It wasn't taken up as a criminal matter because it happened in the 1990s, if I remember correctly, and the statute of limitations had run out. Let's face facts, calling him a rapist is an accurate description.
I don't see how you got there.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not everything is about morality. Morality pertains to human behaviour in relation to the group, by and large. People can and do value things that don't have a lot to do with morality... and can base their decisions for what to do on that. Geo-political decisions also rarely made predominately on the basis of a morality.
Quoting Bob Ross
It does matter if you rely on your group for survival, which is generally the case outside maybe modern affluent society to some extend. You risk exclusion from the group.
And I don't think the realism/anti-realism distinction is very helpful here. It's real enough that a certain group of people, grown up with certain moral institutions and traditions, will have certain moral ideas which make them behave in corresponding ways... Morality has real imprints in they way groups are organised, in the people and also real consequences.
Also why should something be objective to actually matter? I don't get it. If I value something 'only subjectively', I do value it... why should I need something extra to actually matter?
If there is no actual badness, like you claim, then there is no such thing as a bad farmer. A bad farmer is a farmer that is actually bad at farmingthis is not relative to anyones beliefs or desires about it.
Anything related to behavior is related to morality; and morality is about right and wrong behaviornot in relation to the group.
They shouldnt.
Assuming that is even true, should they? Nope.
Survival doesnt actually matter under your view: the best you can say is that if you value surviving then you should care about your society.
Are those moral principles in those societies expressing something objective...or not? Who cares if it feels real!
Thats what it means: I dont think you understand what actual goodness entailsit is objective goodness: those are synonyms.
If you say something actual matters, then you are claiming to know at least some moral facts.
That you actually value something, is not the same as that something actually mattering. In other words, that you actually believe or desire for something to matter does not entail that it actually matters. For something to actual matter, it must matter independently of non-objective dispositions.
The evidence wasn't not very solid: that's why I don't believe he would have been convicted. In criminal court, one needs evidence that implies a conclusion without a reasonable doubt: there's a lot about that case, as far as I could tell from Wiki, that doesn't add up. Unless I am missing something, I find it kind of shocking they even found him liable, other than that it was in New York, because, like I said, all the evidence was just two people saying she told them when it happened, a tape that doesn't actually confess to any sex crimes, and defamation facts.
If a person claims you raped them 23 years ago, they have two people (who didn't actually witness anything) corroborating the story, and an irrelevant sex tape; would you say that you should be convicted on that evidence?
Correct. I believe I already noted I am analyzing this through an Aristotelian lens; but maybe that was with someone else.
Not quite. I have to vote for either Trump or Kamala, and both are unideal options. Ethically, when I am forced to choose between two evils, I pick the lesser of themwhich, to me, is Trump because his political positions tend to be way better than Kamalas. This is, firstly, a political analysis and, consequently, an ethical analysis.
I havent gone through every single one; but it seems like they are baseless allegations (so far) that were conveniently brought to the light once he took office. I find that suspect, but, yeah, he may very well have committed sex crimes: I take charging someone with being a rapist to be a very serious allegation, and so I will not attribute it to someone unless I have solid evidence to back it up. That 27 women have claimed sexual assault does not itself prove sufficiently that someone is a sex offender. Again, he may really have done it; but nothing so far, that I have seen, really proves to a high degree of certainty that he has done itand I cant just make serious allegations about anyone without having serious evidence to back it up.
Oooo, I like this. No, definitely not. I am not denying that someone having these many allegations raises my eyebrows; and I would definitely be protective of, e.g., my daughter(s).
:roll:
What about it?
Fair enough: I didnt know that. They are inferior for doing that.
Yeah, thats objectively bad. No one should be shoving a particular religion down the throats of children at a public schoolthats not how it should work.
I dont know about that...only three countries that I am aware of have a constitutional right to bear arms: thats the US, Mexico, and Guatemala.
No, no: you are stretching it here. I am trying to be as open-minded and charitable as possible; but that Hollywood tape explicitly states that there is consent, and that he is conveying that women will give you consent when you are famous (which actually tends to be true if you think about it).
What???
Aristotelianism is a form of moral realism.
It is relative to the objective, internal goods to farmingviz., relative to what farming has as its purpose.
I genuinely dont think that colloquial debates about abortion hold up for philosophers in the literature on abortionirregardless of whether they are pro-choice or pro-life. The colloquial debates have been debunked a long time ago: those have been resolved by normative ethics.
We dont need to appeal to authority to discuss ethics ..
Politics is literally the practical study of justice .which is a sub-branch of ethics. Politics is about how we should behavior and organize ourselves: how could you not say that is morally relevant?!?
I dont think you have any good reason to say that. Face facts - You support a man who treats women like shit, including sexual assault. The man whos been chosen to lead this country, the country that is so much better than all the other countries in the world, that is so superior and morally advanced that it should export its values to other, inferior countries.
I dont generally hold it against people who support Donald Trump, but the hypocrisy here is awful.
Are you saying that that evidence, that I expounded, is enough to convict someone of sexual assault???
I am not saying that Trump is great, nor that he, ideally, should be president. Yes, it would be nice if the US actually had nominees that were virtuous.....still, this does not negate the fact that our republic is objectively better than Talibanian rule.
I don't know and you don't know whether he would have been convicted. You didn't "expound" any evidence at all. You just waved around vague allegations. Did you read anything about the trial outside of the NY Post? Fact is, you don't care whether or not he did it. My hypocrisy accusation stands.
I'm done.
I'm saying there is no objective badness, and you're turning that into actual badness... as matter of definition it seems.
What is considered good or bad farming is subjective, in that you do have different ways of farming that have different values in mind (like say conventional, organic, permaculture etc etc...), where the one only is concerned with producing the most food, and other may be concerned more with doing it in an enviromentally healthy way. Once we agree on the cirteria good farming must meet (the standard of judgement is not objective), then we can go and look if a specific farmer meets those criteria (and that does depend on objective factors). I think you are confused between the standard of measurement and the measurement itself in relation to that standard.
Quoting Bob Ross
That is true for facts about the world, but not for morality because those are not about "truth" in the sense of corresponding to some objective state of the world.
I just don't agree with what you seem to think follows from definition/is axiomatically true. I don't get what an objective value could mean, how do you find these in the world?
State religion. The Monarch being the head of the Church should make it obvious.
Quoting Bob Ross
Lol. Nobody that doesn't belong to the church isn't forced to participate in the classes, yet even today 65% of Finns do belong to the state church and just seven years ago 71% belonged to the Church. When I was in school (in the 1980's) well over 90% of Finns belonged to the Lutheran Church, so it would have been quite stupid not to have religion taught at school for all those that belonged to the Church. Even then children that didn't belong to the Church or were of other religious background naturally were exempt of it.
And btw have you noticed something in the symbolism of the flags of the Nordic countries?
So sorry to upset you, but Christianity has been a fundamental part of what has been called Western culture. If you forget that, you are quite selective in what for you Western culture etc. is about.
Quoting Bob Ross
That then is quite meaningless, more of an oddity if firearms are mentioned in the Constitution or not. Mexico has quite strict gun laws, similar to other countries and gun ownership is actually quite low with the country being at 60th place of firearms per capita (Guatemala is at number 70). Then you have countries like Switzerland that has a lot of guns and with a militia that has the (government owned) assault rifles at home.
The specifics of the current political situation is something that Aristotle could know nothing about.
Quoting Bob Ross
It does not. Here is what he says:
Where is explicit consent? How can there be consent when he does not even wait?
Quoting Bob Ross
Bullshit! His getting away with it and them consenting are two very different things.
Quoting Bob Ross
What you said was:
Quoting Bob Ross
Your good farmer is a hypothetical. Rather than addressing what it means to be a good farmer you assume that denying your vacuous claim about the good farmer means you must be a moral anti-realist. "Moral realism", "moral anti-realism", "objective goodness", none of this is about what actual farmers do, which is the only basis on which to base a claim that he is or is not a good farmer.
Quoting Bob Ross
I mean this with all goodwill and intent: put aside the bloodless, frictionless world of the theoretical and come back down to earth.
Quoting Bob Ross
It is not an appeal to authority. The fact is that those who discuss ethics, both casually and professionally, are not in agreement. Normative ethics is not some transcendent or ready made solution to ethical problems.
Quoting Bob Ross
Political science and political philosophy are studies, politics is not. Your man Trump cares nothing about justice or ethics.
It's actually a pretty damn good indication of this. I can't understand why, if this was your brother or father, you certainly wouldn't rest on these laurels. But if its someone you would psychologically benefit from being charged and convicted you're happy to lay a really dubious claim out there like this. I realise its just a forum, and who cares, but diligence around provability is an important aspect, and the conclusion drawn here is decidedly undemocratic.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes.
Quoting Fooloso4
This isn't evidence of any kind, as regards rape. This is a recording of a private conversation which gives us every reason to detest his character. This wouldn't even count as probative evidence in a criminal court.
Quoting Fooloso4
No it doesn't. Much weirder, more expansive and stupid shit has happened. Michael Jackson's criminal trials come to mind. Absolute joke. Full disclosure though: I have been the target of more than one completely and utterly false claims of sexual assault/rape. One of those was in fact, a situation in whcih I was sexually assaulted and the woman wanted to get ahead of it. So, it does not strain credibility to think there are several, perhaps scorned, unstable women willing to lie in court for money. That's not at all hard to conceive, in the context of "this is the election for America's future". Ideological commitment is poison.
Quoting T Clark
No. No it isn't. It is a speculative slur, at this point. Bob is right.
Alas, if only denial made it true. As far as I can tell, you and Bob dont even care if it is.
There are many, both men and women, who choose to remain silent or do not press formal charges. They do not wish to undergo a difficult, traumatic, and humiliating ordeal where they are assaulted a second time. This time around by defense lawyers who care nothing about the truth.
Unfortunately, the case here is that there is no good evidence. Caring if its true has nothing to do with the discussion I've engaged in. I can see the confusion you're doubling down on. The problem is, denial is legitimate in the absence of proof. Concluding guilt in an absence of compelling evidence is the type of thing that gets judges removed from the bench.
Quoting Fooloso4
Very true. I am one.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sorry, what the heck are you talking about here?
Quoting Fooloso4
It seems you're not getting what you want out of hte world stage, and thereby foregoing any sense of objectivity here. THat's fine, i guess. But hte facts indicate other than the conclusions you're drawing.
One of those who do not care about the truth?
Quoting AmadeusD
Are you just pretending to be clueless? The defense will do what they can to attempt to discredit the accuser. This often amounts to a psychological abuse and an assault on the victim's integrity.
Quoting AmadeusD
Nonsense. This has nothing to do with me, but when 27 women over a period of 30 years make allegations of sexual misconduct against the same person two things seem likely: there are others who remain silent and at least a few of the allegations are true. Or, perhaps you agree with him that grabbing women by the pussy is acceptable behavior if you are "a star". Or that them "letting you" do is is consent.
Quoting AmadeusD
What facts?
Quoting AmadeusD
27 is more than several. "perhaps scorned" is weaseling and a sleazy suggestion. They were not willing to lie in court, 26 of 27 did not bring legal charges against him so there was no opportunity to lie in court or financial incentive. When you do not know the facts they cannot indicate anything.
You are clearly doing this in bad faith. This one hit like a shitty Twitter response.
No. I am a victim of several sexual assaults, who has chosen not to press charges. So, kindly, keep your bullshit in your mind.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes. That is their entire job, and half the purpose of an adversarial justice system. If you have an issue with this, it might be worth having a look into the middle east and how their courts work.
Quoting Fooloso4
Its has everything to do with you. Your biases are writ large, and its clear your have a pre-determined view on the matter. It doesn't seem to matter to you that we have systems in place to adjudicate conflicting accounts of things. You are also intimating that a recording of a private conversation, in a context that has absolutely nothing to do with carrying out a sexual assault is evidence of one. You can't be serious can you?
Quoting Fooloso4
These are two things that seem likely to you. Once again, this is about you. Not the facts.
Quoting Fooloso4
Fucking, exactly my dude. Exactly.
Quoting Fooloso4
It is several. No it isn't. You are having a moment because I've suggested a completed reasonable, and previously known possibility for the persecution of socially controversial men. I didn't even suggest this did happen. I've suggested it does not strain credibility. It doesn't. Your protests aren't anything more than that.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ok. So, why are you coming to all manner of absurd conclusions, foregoing democratic judicially processes and assuming everything but God to get to a position like the one you're in?
True, but this doesnt entail that Aristotelianism has nothing to say about it.
I see what you are saying, but no one tends to get explicit consent to kiss a woman: that literally kills the vibe, and women attest this.
Are you suggesting that a man should always explicitly ask to kiss a woman before doing it? I dont think most women even want that: what they want is for a man to read the situation properly.
Likewise, he said they let you do it and he didnt say I can do it anyways.
To your point, the dude is unhinged and unvirtuous; but that tape doesnt demonstrate he unconsensually kissed women; unless you think it has to be explicated beforehand
Whether or not a farmer is good at farming is relative to what the purpose of farming is; and this is not relative to anyones desires or beliefs about farming. I think you may be conflating conditionals with relativity.
Lets take another example: a good chess player. There is such a thing as a good chess player, because there are rules to the game of chess; and whatever internal goods exist for chess, which are relative to the purpose of chess, are what is better to obtain in chess; and whatever habits and actions which are more apt to acquiring and preserving those goods in chess are best for chess playing. This is not hypothetical, it is relativistic.
If you think it is hypothetical, then please demonstrate why.
Is it in public schools? Thats a no-no for me.
Lol.
I never claimed to the contrary. PS: Christianity is also deeply entrenched in Aristotelianism.
I am not sure I followed, but my point is that people should have the right to bear arms.
If you have a thread called "In Support of Western Supremacy, Nationalism, and Imperialism." sooner or later it becomes a Trump thread. There is already a Trump thread.
The loving father when he and she were younger :kiss:
There are no objective values: there are objective, moral facts.
A value is a worth assigned to something by an agent, and so is always (inter-)subjective; whereas a moral judgment can express something about what is actually good or bad, right or wrong, and so is objective.
As an Aristotelian, I would say that there are objective, internal goods to things when those things have a Telos. E.g., a good farmer, a bad chess player, a good watch, a bad human, etc.
I didn't steer the conversation towards Trump, and it is not necessary to do so to contend with the OP: I am merely entertaining all avenues of conversation that present itself to me.
I expounded the evidence that, as far as I could tell, were presented in court: did I leave anything out?
If over 90% of the people belonged to the same church, why not? Besides, nothing makes people less religious than you make the religion something close to the government. The clergy really doesn't have to compete in any way for the people. They can behave like government employees.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right to bear arms is in many countries. It really doesn't have to be in the constitution.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hey, nobody hasn't used the Hitler card yet. Or have they???
That proponent of a mixture of nationalism and socialism has to appear sometime.
Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to my comment about lawyers. It is not clear what "they do" refers to. You misquote me. What I said is "they do not ... "
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't. The point is that it is a major reason why many victims just keep quiet.
Quoting AmadeusD
It is not a pre-determined view. It is a view based on his own words, the allegations against him, his lies, his numerous court cases, and the strategy he learned from Roy Cohn - deny, deny, deny.
Quoting AmadeusD
These women made allegations. He denied each and every one of them as he does any accusation against him. That is as far as all but one of these cases went.
Quoting AmadeusD
I am not intimating anything. I am saying that grabbing a woman by the pussy without consent is a sexual assault. He claims that this is what he does.
Quoting AmadeusD
According to the Oxford Languages dictionary, 'several' means:
Twenty-seven is many.
Quoting AmadeusD
Evidently your threshold is far greater than mine. Is there any number of allegations against him that he denies that would strain his credibility for you?
Quoting AmadeusD
Facts are provided in the link. I listed them. The fact that the number of allegations against him are much more than "several". The fact that they did not bring legal charges against him so there was no opportunity to lie in court. The fact that E Jean Carroll brought him to court and won. The fact that none of them except her pursued it any further.
These are the facts you missed or ignored in your attempt to defend him.
Correct. But, in retrospect, my comment makes more sense in this context. Apologies for the mis-quote.
Quoting Fooloso4
Assuming so is ... bad form. Assuming guilt is bad form. INferring guilt is bad form. Filling gaps with non-existent victims (as far as we currently know, given we're talking about non-reports essentially) is bad form. I don't do that. I wouldn't accept others doing that around me. Perhaps its the legal mind, but I can't allow it (i.e I would push back. Do whatever you want lol).
Quoting Fooloso4
Based on the following sentence (in your reply) i'm going to reiterate that it is. We can just leave that, I would think.
Quoting Fooloso4
Then we have literally no reason to assume guilt, do we? Nice.
Quoting Fooloso4
You will notice that my comments on the initial position apply (perhaps more strongly) to this one. You have nothing.
Quoting Fooloso4
The context is a section of a group. 27 is several as opposed to 200 (where maybe 75+ would be 'many'). This is a dumb thing to object to anyway. It has nothing to do with the substance.
Quoting Fooloso4
No. But I think this is actually the answer you want, you're just not adequate distinguishing the important part: A single provable instance would be enough to write him off in the same way even some of hte lets say less stable detractors have. That's simply not something I can get on with in any way. Accusations don't bother me, that much (particularly ones against a wealthy, older white male (i.e extremely easy target) in the context of his becoming President where half the country already wanted his head). That's a separate conversation, but just stating so it's clear.
If you'd just asked me whether I personally actually think he's sexually assaulted anyone before, I'd have said, oh almost surely. I don't know a single person who hasn't, when drilled. Its a matter of degree. And his 'degree' is likely to be far higher than the ones I'm intimating in the previous sentence. Do I believe he did any of the discreet things he's accused of? I'd be an idiot to go one way or the other.
Quoting Fooloso4
Then, I think we're done. Nothing you've presented provide any basis for your conclusions, in my view. You've doubled down on assumptions, reading words as actions, a pretense of Godly knowledge of character and a knack for inferring facts from non-facts that I'm jealous of. At least one (that other complaints went no further) tell against you. You have to fill in the gaps and assume embarrassing numbers of elements to come to any conclusion. Reiterating the above: I'd be an idiot to believe one way or the other. This is hte correct way to deal with disputed facts when you're not the Judge, God or have direct personal knowledge.
The only aspect you've brought up which has much to say is the E Jean Carroll case which is certainly concerning, and even on terms I've restricted my concerns to. However, I would refer you to the Amber Heard case in London for an example of why this says not much. It just means Trump couldn't win a defamation case. It's word-against-word, and both sides have an extremely vested interest. For several reasons, the Jury was likely disposed (particularly on a lower threshold of evidence in civ cases) to find him guilty. He very well could have raped her. He very well could have done something lesser. He very well may just be a clumsy dick that people are targeting because of his clumsy, lusty behaviour (for the avoidance of doubt, any form of SA is precluded from the description just given).
I have not defended him once. I don't know him. He seems a total goof who I wouldn't enjoy spending time with.
I have pushed back on legally dubious claims and presumptions of guilt. Might be worth focusing a little bit ;)
That is the problem! You are arguing as if this is a legal matter. It's not. There are no legal cases.
As I hope you know, there is a big difference between:
a
and a situation in which there is a "vibe".
Quoting Bob Ross
I am quoting from a transcript of the conversation. What does it mean to let you do it when you don't even wait?
Quoting Bob Ross
Xenophon's Oeconomicus is about this. It is not simply about the purpose, it is about the practice and results of the practice.
Quoting Bob Ross
What are the internal good of chess?
Quoting Bob Ross
What is the purpose of chess? People play for a variety of reasons. I did not play chess with my young children with the purpose of
Is there a point you are trying to make in defining what it means to be good at chess?
It seems we have moved quite far away from supremacy, nationalism, and imperialism.
I already explained this to you, and you didnt address it adequately. There is such a thing as implicit consent and, specifically with kissing, it is commonly accepted that you can kiss a woman without explicitly asking if its ok firstit depends, rather, on the circumstances.
By Trump saying I dont even wait, I dont think he is saying that he BlitzKriegs them so that they dont have time to say no or gesture him to stay away. All he is saying in that tape, is that women will let you do things to them if you are famous; which is generally very true.
The practice is relative to a purpose or purposes. My point is that, as generally understood, there is such a thing, in principle, as a good or bad farmer. Nothing you have said has negated this; instead you are sidestepping it by trying to debate what exactly the practice of farming entails.
The internal goods are anything that can be acquired that is good relative to what chess is designed for. These are things like competitive skill, strategic imagination, competitive intensity, winning (fairly), etc.
An external good would be like if a person were trying to win chess just for the sake of winning the prize that comes with it.
To play a fair, strategic match according to certain rules to determine a winner. Thats the Telos of chess; although people can certainly have other reasons and purposes for doing it. A person who plays chess may not be a chess player in the strict sense of that word; because they may not be playing chess for those internal goodsit may be, e.g., to get revenge on their ex who is really good at chess by beating them.
That internal goods are objective goods relative to the Telos of the thing in questionthere are objective goods to chess. This doesnt, prima facie, entail that they are morally relevant; but I am building up to that here.
It definitely seems like it, but it is important to understand that my view presupposes an aristotelian form of moral realism; and so if you dont see that then we cant make much progressespecially if you are not a moral realist yourself at all...
Because the church should have no influence on the state: that usually leads to corruption, persecution, and disaster.
Oh, do you mean like a state right? How are they codifying that into law there?
Surprisingly no, they have not yet...everyones been hammering Trump. My answer is simple: I dont promote socialism at all nor authoritarianism (to that degree). By nationalism, I just mean it in the sense as noted in the OP; which I dont think aligns with Hitlers version.
I am not sure if I responded to this already, but here we go (again, if applicable).
Yes, that is incoherent to say that something is actually good, but isnt objectively good.
No, no. A moral judgment is expressing something objective if its truth is independent of non-objective dispositions; and whether or not someone is good at some form of farming, chess, playing basketball, etc. is objective. E.g., it is not relative to anyones beliefs or desires that Lebron is a good basketball playerand, in principle, it couldnt be the case.
You are confusing moral relativism with moral non-objectivism (such as moral subjectivism).
These is such a thing, but that does not mean that when Trump just starts kissing women there is implicit consent. It does depend on the circumstances.Once again:
Quoting Fooloso4
We are talking about what Trump brags he had done, not what might happen between other people in other circumstances.
Quoting Bob Ross
To just assume that women will let him do anything because he is a star is a rapist mentality. Some women might assent but many will not. I will stop there for a moment hoping this might sink in. It is the problem of the "casting couch". Some women might let him because they think it might advance their career, but others because they are coerced and worried about what will happen if they don't.
Grabbing someone and not waiting does not leave time to judge whether they welcome the advance or give them a choice in the matter. In the E Jean Carroll case she did not "let him" do things, she resisted, but he did them anyway.
Quoting Bob Ross
Good practice involves more that just the purpose construed narrowly. It is not simply a matter of the production of crops. To be good practice it must be sustainable. It must limit the negative environmental consequences. Phosphates produce larger yields but are harmful to streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes.
Quoting Bob Ross
Of course, but in practice as well as principle. What makes a good farmer is what she does in practice not principle.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am not sidestepping it. I have not denied that there is a difference between a good and bad farmer. It is, however, vacuous. The question of what it means to be a good farmer must address the practice of farming.
Quoting Bob Ross
To play fair and by the rules is not the purpose of playing the game, it is a requirement. Determining a winner may be secondary to other things. If you are a competent player determining whether you will win again the average 5 year old should be evident without even playing.
Perhaps in your case I am wrong. Perhaps you would play with the purpose of beating them. Perhaps the same holds for other games as well - to win against them. And in line with the topic of this thread, to assert and demonstrate supremacy.
I'm not sure what you mean with a Telos or internal good, because we invented farming, chess and clocks. These concept did not exist until we invented them... so how does one make sense of them having an internal good aside from the subjective values and goals we had in mind when devising them. I mean sure, good farming practices for instance will also be informed by objective things in the world, by how plants grow, or how weather fluctuates between seasons, but what it ultimately depends on is on what we decided farming should do for us (i.e. producing food, without to much work, in sustainable ways maybe etc etc).
I don't disagree that Lebron is objectively a good basketball player, I'm saying that we have decided what constitutes a good basketballplayer collectively (or intersubjectively)... and then we can go comparing a specific player like Lebron to that conventional standard, and conclude on the basis of objective facts that he is indeed objectively a good player.
I am glad we found common ground on that part of the point; and I agree that granting that there is such a thing as implicit consent does not entail itself that Trump is properly acquiring it.
The difference between us is that you think that the tape, which you keep re-quoting, demonstrates a confession out of Trumps own mouth to kissing women without any kind of consent; and I am not seeing how. What do you think of the part that says they let you do it? It seems like, to me, that you are ignoring that part to fit the tape to your narrativebut I dont want to put words in your mouth.
I didnt say nor imply that; and I completely agree if someone were to think that they can do whatever they want simply because they are a star that they have a sex offender mentality. However, Trump didnt say in that tape that he was just assuming women will let him do it when he does it: he said, and I cannot stress this enough, that they let you do it. He was noting that there are perks to being famous, and one is that women are more incentivized to do sexual things with you; and I think we can both agree that that is true. I mean De Caprio still pulls women in their early 20s: same idea.
Thats consensual, in this case. I cannot stand it when women let a man do something to her as a means towards her own end and then when it doesnt work out in their favor they cry wolf. Can we agree on that?
I agree here: this is a form of sexual abuse. 100%.
Yes, I concede that he said that he doesnt even wait; but he also said that they let him do it. So, contextually, the best interpretation is that he means that he doesnt ask or obnoxiously slowly come onto them for the kiss.
For example, I could see someone saying:
Yeah, Hannah and I had a great time yesterday. We went on a nice date, and she let me kiss her. I didnt even have to ask: I didnt have to wait. She just let me kiss her. It was amazing.
Do you see what I mean?
Yes, she tried to hold him civilly liable for rape and the Jury agreed but only with respect to the common use of the termso he wasnt held liable. My problem is that she had no concrete evidence, and waited conveniently until he was very popular in office to do it; and then made a ton of money off of her book about it.
A well designed system is full of smaller systems with their own internal goods that contribute to greater internal goodse.g., the human body, a society, etc.
So we agree, then, that there is such a thing as actual goodnessi.e., objective goodness? That was my point.
You asked for a link. I provided one but apparently you did not read it. The tape is only one part of a larger picture. There are 27 women over a period of thirty years who made allegations against him. There was in those cases no consent involved.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think it means that at least in some of the cases the do not resist. There are different reasons why. It should not be taken as consent simply because someone does not fight. If you are really interested do some research on what victims of molestation say.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am not. I said that Trump's assumption. All you have is his side of the story.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes. But what might hold for one case does not have for all cases or even most cases. Even if it is true in some cases it is not in others. Because it is not true in those cases it is molestation.
Quoting Bob Ross
He says nothing about going on a nice date. From the transcript:
I don't think her name is "with the gold". That is nothing like a dating situation. It is predatory behavior.
Quoting Bob Ross
What concrete evidence might she have? He attacked her in a department store dressing room.
Some degree of public recognition is not licence to molest someone. Spin this any way you want, but his being "a star" does not confer privilege or make all or most women weak in the knee because it is Donald Trump.
I don''t think there is any good reason to pursue this further. If you regard his action as permissible and imagine that women welcome his advances, there is nothing more I can say to that will make you see just how wrong it is.
I am talking about the fact that things that have design have goods which are intrinsic to that design (e.g., a good clock is a clock that can tell the time properly and a bad clock is a clock that can tell the time poorly): this isnt relative to a subjects belief about itso it isnt subjective.
Its no different than:
Then you agree that there is such a thing as objective goodness; because you just agreed Lebron is objectively a good basketball player.
The problem you are noting is that we invented basketball, but this doesnt make the internal goods to basketball subjectivethats the key you are missing. These internal goods are relative to the design, irregardless if that design was imbued by a subject or subjects.
If it were subjectively the case that Lebron is a good basketball player, then I would be equally right to say right now that he is a terrible basketball and you wouldnt be able to say I am wrongbecause no one is actually right or wrong about it.
I did, and, again, women merely claiming be to sexually abused is not sufficient evidence to support that the alleged man did it. Thats poor reasoning, and opens up for innocent men to be convicted of crimes they didnt commit by evil women.
All you are noting here is that he speaks demeaning about womenthats not a sex crime.
Perhaps, I could see that in the looser sense of ~trying to go out and have sex with as many attractive women as possible. Theres tons of men out there that are f*boys that speak in an overly sexualized way about womenthats not a sex crime.
Yes, and unfortunately, this is the real challenge for sex crime victims: there word cannot be enough to convict someone, but the nature of the crime usually means theres no further evidence. I am not sure how to help solve this issue, but I do know it isnt to lower our standards for evidence.
No problem. I am always here if you want to keep discussing this.
I dont think it is morally permissible; but it is legally permissible. A sex crime happens when you unconsentually do something sexual to a woman, and nothing about his tape nor the other claims of the other women gave sufficient evidence that he did anything illegal. He was speaking about women in an immoral way, but wasnt confessing to anything illegal.
I agree with all of this, never disagreed about this really.... but that is I think besides the point for the OP.
The point is that different societies have invented different designs, to use your terminology here. It isn't "subjective" what is right or wrong, because it objectively follows from the design, indeed. But what is right or wrong will differ from society to society because they have invented different designs. Maybe it's a bit like american football and soccer (i.e. real football), there is a different design, so a good football player will be something different depending on what design we are talking about.
That is why I argue that it isn't these 'in-group' moral standards that should be used to determine how one acts geopolitically, because they are particular to a certain society, but instead the standards that follow from what is agreed upon in the "internalional community" or in diplomatic dialogue between states.
I'm not sure this will come across because I have been restating basically the same point since the beginning.
In such cases the only evidence is the word of the victim. Whenever accused of anything Trump plays the victim. Why, in case after case, do you take his word against women who have nothing to gain by making known what they say has happened to them?
Quoting Bob Ross
What is poor reasoning is jumping from the allegations of these women to a situation where someone like Trump is portrayed as an innocent man convicted of crimes by evil women. It is for this reason that only a fraction of cases are even reported.
What is the reasoning behind the assumption that in case after case after case we should take Trump's word over that of the women?
Quoting Bob Ross
All I am noting is that he does not even seem to know her name. This is far different than the romantic date scenario you provide.
Quoting Bob Ross
When they act on it over and over again with women who have given no indication that they welcome the advance that is a sex crime.
Quoting Bob Ross
No. The real challenge is that they will become the target of just the kind of "reasoning" you provide, where without any evidence they are treated as the evil woman.
Quoting Bob Ross
It is not legally permissible! Lacking sufficient evidence to prove that a crime occurred does not mean that no crime was committed..
If your point would be that human beings have a certain telos (or design), and therefor morally (the way humans should act) is objective, I would disagree with that for a specific reason.
Evolution did not design human beings like we design basketball. But maybe you could say that biological lifeforms do have evolved a kind of telos. The point I would make is that while that is true generally for most life, humans are a special case because part of our telos as eu-social language using beings, is to develop culture. Because culture is not something that is set in stone, but changes over time and from place to place, there is an inherently indeterminate element in our telos an element that I would argue gets filled in with the intersubjective.
Edit: The term intersubjective is maybe not entirely the correct term for it. It's more something akin to cultural materialism, where the intersubjective/cultural is also in part determined by the specific material circumstances a group finds itself in.
Then your biases seem a little larger. Though, I acknowledged earlier, and do so now as a bit of a olivebranch that I am biased in the other direction, having been a victim and having been falsely accused. Fair positions; both, i'd think, if we're not talking legal benchmarks. Though, it seemed you were..
So we havent explored this far yet, because you denied moral realism. Now that I got you on board with the idea of objective goodness, we have to understand what morality is about in this view: right and wrong behavior. An analysis of behavior, subsequently, is an analysis of the mindspecifically those which have sufficiently free and rational capacities (called persons). What is morally objectively good, then, is the behaviors (and habits) which are in alignment with being an excellent person; and this is relative to the Telos, design, of persons. The virtues for persons, are any excellences of characteri.e., habits of character which allow a person to properly size up to being a person.
The virtues, to put it simply, are the traditional virtuese.g., justice, liberality, open-mindness, being morally conscientious, courageousness, etc.
Anything developed or created by a person, must be done in an moral way; and this is to say that it must be done in a virtuous and morally permissible way; which is just to say, in a nutshell, that, e.g., any human society that does not promote properly those internal goods to being a person and, more specifically, a human beingalthough you are right to note that such a society would have objective, internal goodswould be immoral for humans to participate in.
I dont take his word for it: I do not convict him because there is a fundamental and important principle called innocent until proven guilty.
Believing the accuser without any evidence is always wrong; because it does not establish the necessary evidence to support what the accused was accused of.
It was an analogy to point out that saying I didnt even have to wait does not entail itself a confession of sexual assault.
I never said we should treat women that accuse men of sexual crimes, who do not have sufficient evidence to prove it, as evil women.
Even accepting an opinion that its more likely than not Trump, or whoever, committed these crimes, this is true and an inarguably important aspect of a fair judicial system. The opposite risk is so much worse. This is why the 'believe all women' campaign probably resulted in a reduction in women being taken seriously. Coupled with lower thresholds for psychological resilience (i.e, some guy brushed against me in a mosh pit, so I was assaulted is utterly insane, but not uncommon, where women are constantly being told they're at risks that they probably aren't actually at, at most times).
I note, also, that at least here and the UK, Judges are extremely live to this issue and very commonly will convict a man on "convincing hearsay" and thin probative evidence. I.e, nothing actually establishes the thing occurred, let a lone that guy did it - but judges do not want to leave a total gap for the reason Bob noted:
Quoting Bob Ross
No idea how to 'get around' this. But hte situation where 'innocent until proven guilty' is airtight, is clearly better than convicting people on vibes. Having been a victim, I'm rather comfortable telling anyone who thinks otherwise to simply shut up. Just shut up.
Correct; but there is still design in itbut it is a different type of teleology (which I call weak teleology).
That my eye is a product of evolution, does not entail that it is not designed to see in a particular way. You would have to say, e.g., that human beings are not supposed to to have two arms. It makes no sense.
If you dont like the term design, then use the term function: it portrays the same underlying meaning here.
That is a legal principle. As a non legal standard, if one or two people accuse someone of something then it might be reasonable to not reach a conclusion, but as the number of accusations rise in unrelated cases where the accusers who do not know of the other accusations, it would be stupid to continue to assume that they did nothing wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
So if a large number of people make accusations in cases where the only evidence is the word of the person on each side, it is always wrong to believe the accused and not believe the many accusers?
Quoting Bob Ross
Analogies made in cases that are not analogous are at best misleading and at worse deceptive.
Quoting Bob Ross
What you said is:
Quoting Bob Ross
You assume the man is innocent, and so a woman who accuses him is assumed to be evil unless she can prove he did it. But in a great many cases there are no witnesses and no evidence. It is his word against her's and her's and her's, but they can't be believed because they are all evil.
As a practical matter, yes, ceteris paribus, we would say that this person is probably a sexual predator if there are multiple, unrelated accounts. But it does matter if those accounts are not completely unrelated (such as deciding to come out once they realize other people are making such accusations) and to whom is accused (such as a very wealthy person). Likewise, it matters what evidence was presented and by whom (e.g., if my sister makes the claim, then I am much, much more inclined, prima facie, to believe it because I know her character).
I would take a look at the evidence, who is making the claim, and who it is being claimed about. If I dont think that theres enough evidence, the person is of bad or questionable character, or there are reasonable reasons for someone of bad intention to make false claims about the accused, or something similar, then I would not believe them.
An analogy is a similarity in dissimilar events: thats how it works. The analogous aspect was that the phrase I didnt even have to wait does not itself indicate a sex crime was committed. Do you agree or not?
Please re-read what you quoted here:
I stand by my statement, and you are misunderstanding. The second quote is explaining why we assume innocence, under the law, until proven guilty; the first quote is noting that a women who cannot prove sufficiently that the crime occurred is not in principle evil. It is entirely possible for a good women who was sexually abused to not have sufficient evidence to prove it, and that we would then assume, under the law, that that man is innocentso your claim here is a false dichotomy.
In practicality, even if a women cannot prove it sufficiently under the law, you are right to note that we may still believe it anyways (and rightly so).
This is a blatant straw man, and hopefully the above provided ample clarification.
What do you know of character of those women who have made accusations against him? Why not apply the same standard to them as you do to the accused? I agree that if there is evidence of bad intentions then their claims are weakened, but the possibility of bad intentions does not mean that there are bad intentions.
Quoting Bob Ross
There is nothing analogous in these situations. Shooting someone because they pose a threat is not analogues to shooting someone for fun even though the same phrase occurs when I say "I shot him".
Quoting Bob Ross
The problem is with the misogynistic idea that "the evil woman" poses a threat to innocent men. There is always the problem of false conviction. It has nothing to do with "evil women", but this is the kind of thing that gets trotted out whenever a woman accuses a man. She is made suspect.
Quoting Bob Ross
The idea of the evil woman seducing and/or wrongly accusing innocent men is ancient. Whether or not this is what you intended, there it is. It is not simply the problem of false witness, the evil woman comes to play an essential part. The dynamics have been in place since long before us.
Just as much as I can extrapolate from the circumstances which they brought up the charges, and what they benefited from it (if anything).
What you do you mean? I am applying the same principles to both: one is innocent until proven guilty, and there must be sufficient evidence (which demonstrates without a reasonable doubt for legal purposes or more likely than not for civil/practical purposes) that proves them guilty.
I am not saying that they are proven, under the court of law nor civilly, to have evil intentions. I was saying that many aspects of Carrols case just provide reasonable doubt and so her case would not hold up in criminal court.
The point was that the phrase you were using to condemn Trump cannot, in-itself, provide that condemnation.
Sure, but it would be a fair analogy to say that I shot him does not itself entail murder in the case of shooting someone because it could have been self-defense.
Evil people and flaws in the court system pose a threat to innocent people. I dont know why you are turning this into a sexism thing.
Are you saying that idea that a woman would be motivated to lie about being sexually assaulted for the sake of getting a lot of money is completely uncredited?
Arianna Zucker:
Talking about her on the bus prior to meeting her Trump says:
If he were to just start kissing her or grab her by the pussy what she might or might not let him do is irrelevant. There is no indication that she would "let him", he is already doing it. She is just a shiny object to him that he thinks he is entitled to do what he wants with.
You seem to use "actually mattering" as if "actually mattering" is meaningful independent of a context of something actually mattering to a person. However your usage of "actually mattering" seems like gibberish from my perspective.
Why think that "mattering" means something other than simply mattering to one or more persons with non-objective dispositions?
I would say that cultures interact in much the same way individuals do. In both cases there are things like exchange, mutual cooperation, conflict, argument, persuasion, and coercion.
Cultural relativism is a silly idea, but the opposed idea of imposing values is also rather silly. One cannot impose values. When it comes to individuals, we will try to convince opponents and we will coerce them if they become too dangerous. It is the same with cultures. The values of persuasion and reason are really Western values themselves. In the West coercion is a last resort.
Quoting Bob Ross
Anti-imperialism is a very limited justification in the first place. But the disorderedness of a society is not in itself a sufficient reason for intervention. Should we intervene in North Korea out of compassion? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Compassion can be a motive, but it is seldom a sufficient condition for action.
Actual mattering is objective; hypothetically mattering is subjective. What you are noting is that something can "actual matter" to a person subjectively; but if we parse that what that really means is that it hypothetically matters and this particular person is affirming the antecedent. E.g., just because someone thinks cars matter does not entail that "cars matter" is true, but it does entail that "if one cares about cares, then cars matter; and this person cares about cars, so cars matter to them".
Actual mattering is when someone matters independently of our desires or beliefs about it.
True. What I would be saying, analogously, is that we have taken the "you-do-you while I-do-me" principle too far: if your friend decides to go out and rape someone, then you have a duty to forceably impose your values on them insofar as they shouldn't be doing that. Similarly, a society has a duty to take over or at least subjugate another society to their values when the latter gets too immoral.
Even if the negative consequences were very low (or non-existent), are you saying that the West would not be justified in taking over North Korea by force?
I agree that coercion should be the last resort, but it seems to be a resort; and seems to be a valid resort to stop societal structures that are really immoral; and this entails some version of imperialism, even if it is a much weaker version than the standard ones historically.
Well, in virtue of what do we have a duty to prevent immorality? Do we have a duty to perpetrators? Do we have a duty to victims? Do we have a duty to "friends"? Do we have a duty to strangers? Do we have a duty to strangers on the other side of the world?
Quoting Bob Ross
If there were no negative consequences then we would be justified. But even something as simple as resource allocation is a negative consequence, so there will always be negative consequences.
When both the US and North Korea have nuclear weapons, then the question would this:
How many Americans and what percentage of North Koreans population is a justifiable sacrifice to erase the North Korean dictatorship out of existence? And if with Americans the death toll less than have died of Covid (less than 1,2 million), let's say just Hawaii and the Bay area were destroyed, then how many North Koreans would it be enough to revenge the lost Americans?
Justiceno?
What do you mean?
Yes. To punish the perpetrator and avenge the victim(s).
Yes.
Yes. Do you not believe that you have any duty to be just to strangers?
Does being just ultimately depend on where the injustice is happening? Sure, circumstances matter, but, in principle, it doesnt matter.
Agreed.
We are not justified in going to nuclear war with North Korea, assuming both sides have working nukes, to save the people there. The nation firstly has a duty to its own citizens, and not other citizens of other nations.
Generally we do not believe that everyone has legal standing (locus standi).
Similarly, it is the duty of the judge to punish the perpetrator and avenge the victim, not the common person.
Do we have a duty in justice to right wrongs happening on the other side of the world? I don't know. Maybe, but not really? Not everything is within our jurisdiction. Here is Aquinas:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.65.2
I think moral and legal standing are different: the latter is a practical attempt at justice for the community, whereas the former can surpass that sphere of jurisdiction. To deny this, by my lights, is to accept that nothing immoral is happening, e.g., when a citizen of another country violently attacks a citizen of another (for there is no notion of justice qua morality in this sphere of discourse since it lands outside of the purview of both societies to a sufficient extent).
Perhaps the solution is to say that both authorities of each society would congregate to resolve the matter, as opposed to the lower institutions (e.g., police) imposing justice; but, then, what of the, e.g., indigenous member of the tribe, which does not have a sufficiently powerful community to advocate on their behalf, or the non-citizen? Are they chopped liver? If there is not such distinction, mentioned above, then I think so.
This is true if we are careful to denote this duty as legal dutynot moral duty. E.g., I do not have a legal duty to save my daughter from a burning building but I certainly have a moral duty to do so.
Usually, when we note that a person doesnt have duty to enact justice for another; we tend to be saying that as a pragmatic rule of thumb for two reasons: the first being that it tends to be handled more appropriately by those that are of an institution designed to handle it (e.g., police, first responders, etc.), and secondly because imposing that justice usually has sufficiently negative consequences to the avenger that we would not blame them for avoiding avenging or stopping the attack in the first place.
However, I do think it is commonly accepted that if the negative consequences are sufficiently trivial, that it is immoral to do nothing. For example, the man that watched this women get kidnapped while she screamed for help technically doesnt have a legal duty to intervene; but we all think he should have (morally speaking, as that is a part of a mans moral duty and role in society to be a protector).
The problem I have with this line of thinking is that, in principle, we can wipe our hands clean when we avoid doing just things because they are outside of our jurisdictionjurisdiction is just a pragmatic notion to enact justice.
Likewise, the issue with thinking solely in terms of jurisdiction, in the sense Aquinas noted in your quote, is demonstrated sufficiently in the quote itself:
People who think in terms of solely jurisdiction have the same susceptibility as denotoligists: avoiding the right thing to do because it doesnt follow the strict rules laid out for people to follow by people.
Quoting Bob Ross
They are the same insofar as moral standing is not infinite. Not everything is our responsibility to rectify.
Quoting Bob Ross
Why? If I don't have a claim to prevent something, then that something cannot be immoral? This is obviously not true in law.
Quoting Bob Ross
But what about the first reason you gave? That there are those with a duty? If something is happening on the other side of the world, then the duty generally falls to those who live there.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think we both know that the answer to my question is, "No." Or at least, "Generally not."
We are not responsible for everything. That's a fairly important moral and psychological principle, and one that we really struggle with in the West. Your slippery slope concern does not invalidate it.
No worries at all: I did the same thing to @Mww haha.
I was assuming that if something is immoral than, ceteris paribus, one would think it should not be done; which, to me, implies some degree of duty merely by acknowledging that. Of course, you are denying the binding of a moral agent to stopping immorality simpliciter; since one may not have a duty, under your view, to stop it even though it is immoral.
Let me ask you this (to better understand your position): let's imagine you are the head of the police for the entire county (or region) that you live in; you find out that a woman is getting raped 2 inches past the county (or region) line (thusly making it in a different county [or region] than your own jurisdiction); and you find out that the authorities in that county will not do anything about it (perhaps they lack the resources, simply aren't doing their job, etc.). Are you saying that you wouldn't dispatch units to help that woman because, in principle, the raping is happening outside of your country (jurisdiction)?
If so, then please, if you don't mind, elaborate why or how one could justify doing nothing in this situation; and, more generally, how a moral agent is not bound, qua moral agency, to stop immoral acts all else being equal.
I understand that we do not have a duty to invest all our time and energy, even as moral agents, into saving people; but that's because we have a duty to ourselves and others (like family) that are prioritized higher.
Installing democracy in a nation in which its people follow other moral rules for their politics is impossible. Even if you forcefully destroy what they have and force them to vote, they will never find a stable ground to operate on. You are effectively not trying to install democracy, you are trying to reshape their entire world view, their beliefs and sense of normalcy.
Yes, we can argue that cultures can be evaluated out of their humanistic qualities. We can oppose a culture for how it treats its people. But change can only come from the inside. We can try and expose these people to our values, show them another way and if they want to follow that they will eventually change.
But enforcing it by force will attach that brutality to the values that's supposed to be installed.
In essence, if I invade a nation, killing anything that comes in my way and then try to communicate my message of peace and understanding, of free will and love. My entire course of action to do so creates a cognitive dissonance in the people I try to "help". They might agree with the love, peace and understanding, but at the same time your actions speak of violence. Will that people not see view the whole package of what you brought them? That you did not only bring the message of love, but also the force and violence as well?
Because we can also look within the western democracies that we have. As a swede I could view US politics as barbaric. With its inability to help its own people, the racial violence, the risk of authoritarian power and the risk of its military capability to initiate a new world war when some delusional president takes power.
Should the more balanced democracies within western culture gather together and invade the US, kill its corrupt leaders and corporate "oligarks", rip their constitution to pieces and install the better constitutional laws that we have, the parliament politics that better function as a representative democratic system and stay there until the US population have learned the better way of how democracy should be handled?
Because democracy in itself and the western values in general are in some places wildly in conflict with itself. And many democracies are ill-built to govern against manipulation and corruption within their halls of power.
The bottom line is that change has to come from the inside. The only way to truly change a nation to the better is to inspire better ideals. It is painfully slow, but it is also rock solid in the long term. Most attempts at "installing democracy" have failed miserably, with even more dire consequences like terrorism growing not only to fight back within their own borders, but also against he power that came there to "help".
What you are talking about when mentioning North Korea is not about installing "better values" and changing their culture to a "better system". You look at their existence as a danger to the world, with their nuclear capabilities and their threats of war. Invading to defeat that is not about "installing democracy" any more than invading Nazi Germany to get rid of Hitler's regime. That's another action entirely that has to do with offensive defense, not "helping" people.
That is a better way to do it, but an invasion can work too and sometimes is necessary. You are forgetting that every major Western country was built off the violence and subjugation of weaker societies. E.g, the US was originally native american territory. For some reason Westerns seem to forget this, like the West just emerged through peaceful inspirations
My point is not that we need to incessantly impose our values on other societies; but, rather, that it is a necessary last resort sometimes. Likewise, we should be, always, trying to influence other nations to our better values (if we truly believe ours are better, that is).
I would love to see Iran fall, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, etc. Wouldnt you? Yes, the West has tried before and failedso what? Try again. Perhaps try your inspiration tactics.
Like what? Are you thinking of peaceful protestsGhandiesque stylechange? That wont due, excuse my french, twiddly d**k in Iran
But, still, in principle, we should be trying to install it by whatever means are feasible and reasonable relative to the nation executing it.
No, I dont. Lets clear away the misconfusion here. Imagine North Korea was the exact as it is now except it had no ability nuke or bomb any other nations. According to your logic here, North Korea shouldnt be invaded because .it is not about changing their culture to a better system even though they are mass genociding their people?!?
The US has its own problems for sure, but it isnt nearly as bad as you make it seem. Theres very little racial violence, and most of it is from liberals on whites (or other perceived non-minorities); the US provides people with a good standard of living with a booming economy; and Trump is not going to do anything worse than Biden has already done.
Lmao, is this Sweden you are referring to? Do you think Sweden is better than the US? I hope you arent referring to inferior societies like Great Britain.
If you genuinely think that the US is that bad, then you should be advocating for those balanced demoncracies to influence the US into being better as much as feasibly possible. Is the US bad enough to invade it? Thats going to be relative to how bad you think it is.
For me, I think the US is much better than these balanced democracies; and I dont all of them combined could put a dent in the USat least not head-on warfare. Maybe they could get the people to revolt for the sake of socialism.
There is definitely a lot of corruption, like any other of these balanced countries. I wouldnt say we should kill them, but rather charge them with the crimes they have committed and actually hold them to the law.
Ok, name one constitution that is better than the american one; and elaborate on its main rights that it outlines.
Sweden has strict gun laws that prevent good people from defending themselves and the people from being capable of overthrowing a tyrannical government. Ironically, it has incredibly high gun violence too ..
I would never live in a country that doesnt have a basic right to bear arms. Never.
An invasion doesnt have to look like that; but, sure, there will be immanent resistancethats natural. Historically, it is a couple generations later when those sentiments die out. However, in my examples, the issues on those inferior societies are substantial and not trivial. I wouldnt advocate to invade Sweden even though I dont think it is a better place to live because it isnt THAT BAD. Talibanian Afghanistan IS THAT BAD.
You are right that using full force to invade a country will have nasty side effects for a while and may end up biting the whole project in the butt (and, not to mention, may be immoral if the reasons are not solid for doing so); but my point is that invasion is a last resort sometimes just like killing someone to counter a violent offense that is occurring (e.g., an active shooter).
That's right. I don't think that just because something is immoral I therefore have a duty to stop or prevent it. If that were true then I would have a duty to stop every immoral act I have knowledge of, which would be impossible.
Quoting Bob Ross
Let's grant that one has a moral duty to help the woman being raped, even if they do not have a legal duty (and I have never said otherwise). How does your conclusion follow that we have a duty to prevent every immoral act we have knowledge of? I don't think it follows at all.
Quoting Bob Ross
If I were bound to stop all immoral acts then I would be bound to do the impossible (by stopping every immoral act I have knowledge of); but no one is bound to do the impossible; therefore I am not bound to stop all immoral acts.
I don't know that your idea of "being bound ceteris paribus" is ultimately coherent. Being "bound" implies necessity, whereas "ceteris paribus" implies non-necessity.
Put differently, if we want to say that we should oppose the immorality that is within our power and competence to oppose, then we have actually contradicted the thesis that we are bound to oppose all immorality we have knowledge of (at least on the presupposition that we have knowledge of immorality that is beyond our power or competence to oppose).
One may be bound, e.g., to save every person from burning buildings per seas is the case for firefightersbut yet be incapable of saving everyone in some particular, burning building. I think duty is much more complicated than just what one is bound to do in a particular situation pragamatically. The duty to save people from a burning building clearly extends to saving everyone if possible, but if NOT possible then save as many as possible; and even though it extends to everyone, we would not say that a firefighter did not uphold their duty, irregardless, by only saving as many as they could. It seems like you are missing the fact that duty refers to both: the ideal and pragmatic. All you are noting above, is essentially that we are incapable of fulfilling the ideal duty which we have, or however one should properly explain it (but you get the point), when there is a pragmatic aspect to it. The impossibility of upholding what is ideal, does not negate it as such.
In colloquial speech, we would say that I have a moral duty to my family but not to the homeless stranger; but all else being equal people would say I have a moral obligation to help the latter in ideal circumstances. E.g., a filthy rich man, who doesnt help the homeless man but instead spends it on utterly superficial commodities (like Yachts, women, etc.), even though he could do it with no considerable consequences (to his own wealth), because it is not his duty to help themthats the duty of some homelessness governmental agency I suppose. This seems wrongdont you think?
I partially agree: prima facie you are right to point out that if one is bound to X, then they must abide by X irregardless of the circumstances; but thats not quite right. If one is bound to X, then they must abide by X irregardless of the irrelevant circumstances. Circumstances could be a factor in duty, but not all circumstances are. E.g., a firefighter must save all people from burning buildings irregardless of if they feel like it, but they are not violating that duty meaningfully by saving as many as they can if they cannot save everyone.
Yes, I am not arguing that we must oppose immorality that is out of our power to oppose: I am arguing that, all else being equal, a moral agent opposes all immorality that they can.
That isn't what cultural relativism is. You don't have to be a cultural (or moral) relativist to think those things, and being a relativist doesn't guarantee that you won't think all of those things.
Cultural relativism is the view that objective goods are relative to social norms and values; and this line of thinking does usually cause anti-nationalist ideologies. It is also worth mentioning, to your point, that one may be an anti-nationalist for other reasons.
We could rephrase my argument for the firefighter:
If one were bound to save every person from fire then they would be bound to do the impossible; but no one is bound to do the impossible; therefore no one is bound to save every person from fire.
You say that a firefighter is bound to save every person from burning buildings. I don't think that is right, and I don't think you will find that idea in a firefighting oath.
Quoting Bob Ross
Is a firefighter bound to save every person from fire that he can? No, and although this may sound pedantic, firefighters work on teams, and that means that they are supposed to share the load. This means that a firefighter might be rebuked by his captain for trying to save someone (because it is not always appropriate for him to try to save someone, even when he can).
With regard to common citizens, I don't think a moral agent should "oppose all the immorality that they can." I think they should oppose all the immorality that they should. "Can" is obviously a very loaded word. Let's return to Aquinas' quote:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.65.2
And especially objection 3 and its response:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.65.2
The question here is whether there are reserved forms of correction. Aquinas thinks there are, and that "chastisement by blows" is one of them.
My claim is that the same distinction regarding jurisdiction applies to nations and cultures. "It is lawful for any nation to impart correction to a willing nation, but to impart it to an unwilling nation belongs to those only who have charge over it."
And then there is the deeper question of open coercion, which applies to things like war. Given the United States' military prowess, it can oppose a great deal of immorality. But I don't think it should, because I don't think it has a duty to do whatever it can.
I'm not so sure about this, I think here @flannel jesus is correct. Being critical about your own nation, it's democratic system isn't cultural relativism. It doesn't lead to cultural relativism or that cultural relativism would lead to self criticism. Self criticism can lead to anti-nationalism, if the society has believed in itself and it's values. Self criticism can lead to improving yourself, which is good, but it also can lead to self hatred and apathy.
This is a very interesting take, that I would like to explore more.
I think you are right here: the firefighters duty would be to help put out fires and help people vacant the premisesnot necessarily to save everyone.
So what about the man that watched that woman get kidnapped? It seems like your view leaves no room for moral obligation to help people outside of the strict, institutionalized sense of duty. In fact, wouldnt it follow thatnot only was the man permitted to just stand there and watch buthe was not permitted to stop it since, according to your Thomistic take, he has no jurisdiction to reprimand a fellow unwilling citizen?
To me, it seems like at least some citizens (like healthy males) have certain duties towards other citizens that are not institutionalized; no different than how if the government were to become too tyrannical, then the people would have the duty to revolt.
Like I said before, cultural relativism leads to anti-nationalism; but not all anti-nationalism is due to cultural relativism. I was noting cultural relativism specifically because it is prominent among the masses in the west.
I think you are talking more about moral relativism than cultural relativism.
No I am not. Cultural relativism is a (family of) moral realist theory(ies) that posits, fundamentally, that objective goods are internal (i.e., relative) to societies or culturesin terms of norms, values, or/and lawswhereas moral relativism is any moral theory which posits that objective goods are internal (i.e., relative) to something. Cultural relativism is a form of moral relativism; not all moral relativist theories are a form of cultural relativism.
IMHO, although cultural relativism is allegedly a form of moral realism, it reduces to a form of inter-subjectivism or "inter-non-objectivism" and thusly is a form of moral anti-realism (in actuality). It naturally makes sense for a cultural relativist to opt for anti-nationalism, because imposing moral law (or objective goods) that is only valid for one society can't be validly applied to another.
In a vaguer sense, I think people are moving more and more towards cultural relativism and truth relativism; and that's why many people find it upsetting to impose values onto other nations.
:up:
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, and that seems in line with what I found when looking at firefighter's oaths, i.e. "Protecting people."
Quoting Bob Ross
On your "can" formulation we must help the woman being raped. What about on my "should" formulation? Is there a reason why we should help her aside from the simple fact that we can? I think so.
Aquinas addresses some of this in the complicated Question 79 of the Secunda Secundae, particularly in Article 1 (on the quasi-integral parts of justice) and Article 3 (on omission).
First:
Quoting Bob Ross
See, in the same Question:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.65.3.ad3
How does this pertain to justice, given that Aquinas is speaking in the context of a section of the Secunda Secundae devoted to justice?
I would point to this:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.79.1 - Whether to decline from evil and to do good are parts of justice?
Given that an omission, strictly speaking, is a matter of justice and due (cf. ST II-II.79.3), and omitting aid to the rape victim is an omission of justice in this strict sense, then how is it that the victim is due aid? (If they are not due aid then helping them might be a nice thing to do, but it is not due to them as a kind of duty.)
For Aquinas there are two options. The aid could be due qua the specific virtue of justice, or it could be due according to justice taken in the general sense. If we want to go the route of the specific virtue of justice, then the good of aid must be due to them qua individual (e.g. commutatively). I wouldn't take that route. If we want to go the route of justice taken in a general sense, then the good of aid must be due to them in virtue of their relation to the community or God. I think we could go the route of the community and say that one is acting as a kind of unofficial police officer who has care of the common good. Similar to the way we might pick up litter for the sake of the community, we should also prevent overt injustices such as rape for the sake of the community. This is to assess the person's private good qua common good.
So the rape victim has a right which we must honor in view of their inclusion within our community. Is a person on the other side of the world a member of our community? Classically the answer is 'no', and to say 'yes' is to stretch the meaning of "community" unduly. But if one wants to say that they are a member of the human community and we have a duty to all members of the human community, then it could be said that a duty is owed to them, albeit the thinnest kind of duty.
And then there is the question of their relation to God, especially if we take a revealed aspect of God. This is where it gets tricky, because the Christian has a duty to the victim via God, and our society is by and large a Christian society (and therefore many of the cultural intuitions are Christian intuitions). Thus Aquinas speaks of mercy and beneficence in the context of supernatural charity (ST II-II.30 and II-II.31). For example:
Quoting Aquinas ST II-II.31.2.ad1 - Whether we ought to do good to all?
(Note that for Aristotle this is more straightforward, as we should be beneficent but beneficence is not due in justice.)
And:
Quoting Aquinas II-II.31.3 - Whether we ought to do good to those rather who are more closely united to us?
And on this principle it should be seen that, in effect, we have no real duties to random strangers on the other side of the world.
One would think the Democrats would finally support thus implement the latter, so why is the DNC refusing to allow it if only by disallowing the genuinely fiscally progressive Senator Bernie Sanders to run as its presidential nominee, however many Democrat-voters want him? I mean, other than the DNC being afraid of crossing the corporate lobbyists, especially those hired to represent the healthcare industrys unlimited-profit interests, who make some of the largest donations to the party election coffers.
(Every county in West Virginia voted for Sanders in the 2016 primaries, yet the DNC declared them as wins for Hillary Clinton. The voters there wanted Sanders, but the DNC overruled them. That's not democratic; thats complacency and arrogance. And the 'Democratic' party needs to change that, otherwise such great election defeats can/will reoccur.)
... As for their election loss, the DNC (via candidate Kamala) did rely too much on her promises to protect democracy and constitutionally enshrine abortion rights nationwide motivating enough voters to her side. This, while theres a very large and likely still growing electorate who, due to their formidable unaffordability difficulties, dont have the luxury to make democracy and/or abortion their primary vote-determining concern(s). That many people are financially struggling that much. And, of course, the bad optics and damage resulting from the Biden/Harris administration's essentially-open-borders migration policy only exacerbated political matters.
Quite frankly, one could get the impression that the Democrats and Kamala, etcetera, felt entitled to win; thus, their immense election-loss shock.
Therefore, unless such unaffordability significantly improves, it may no longer be sufficient for a campaigning candidate to focus on non-fiscal social issues, which, besides abortion, mostly consist of race, sexuality and gender. ... Then again, according to Calamity Jane Bodine in the film Our Brand Is Crisis: If voting changed anything [in favor of the weak/poor/disenfranchised] theyd have made it illegal.
According to your posts, Aquinas says:
And:
I am doing some interpretation work here, but heres the two key points:
1. One cannot reprimand a person which one has no jurisdiction over.
2. One can reprimand a person which is doing something unlawful.
These two principles, which emerged from the two quotes above, are not compatible with each other, at least prima facie, because there could be cases, for principle 2, where a person is doing something unlawful, one must reprimand them (either in the sense of stopping them or punishing them), and one has no legal jurisdiction to do so; which would contradict the first principle.
An easy example is that kidnapping case I gave, where the citizen clearly has no jurisdiction, in any meaningful sense of that word, to reprimand nor have any authority over the perpetrator and yet they clearly have a moral duty to help. This leads me to:
Then we are not restricting duty to its strict meaning as it relates to lawunless we are stretching it to the idea of Divine Lawand thereby we must admit that some duties can be relative to other Teleological structures than legal structures. This was my original point, which was negated by Aquinas view that one only has duty when relative to strict, legal structures.
The question, then, becomes: what kinds of teleological structures can support duties?. Before I dive into that, I want to address a couple other things first:
If I were to grant that one such set of moral duties relates to the teleological structure of community, then it seems to plainly follow that the entire human species, as a whole, is the highest of this type of structure as it relates to humans (or, if we want to add in Divine structures, then it would be the highest relative to human, natural structures). I dont see how it would be a stretch to do so because the more universal the structure, the less immediate the duties are; and all you seem to be noting is that the universal, human community is much more distant to the citizen than the most localized community of which they are a member. This is true of the entire hierarchy, however, as a separate district from a citizens most local community is also very mediate (e.g., a state across the country of the US from a citizen of another state is also proportionally mediate relative to their local county or city).
Perhaps the argument is not that because they are so distant to each other that they are not proper communities but, rather, that there is no legal structure which subsumes each (nation) to each other; and so they are not a proper community. The problem with this is twofold: (1) we already established, by your own point, that legal structures are not the only teleological structures which can support duties (although I havent elaborated yet on what other kinds may exist) and (2) (more importantly) there are such legal structures (e.g., NATO, the UN, etc.). With respect to #2, there is no completely universalized legal structure yet, but humanity is obviously working towards it (with universal rights, UN judges, etc.).
I wouldnt say that one must oppose all the immorality that they can per se: one should oppose all immorality that they can as it relates to their duties. The difference between us, is that I think of duties as relating to many teleological structures, whereas yours seems to be limited to legal structures.
So, what teleological structures can support duties? I would argue: all of them! Just as all teleological structures can and do support objective, internal goods to and for the given structure; so, too, does it house duties which relate to the preservation and realization of the purposes in those structures. E.g., just as there is such a thing as a good lion, there is such a thing as a dutiful lion.
Duty and (objective) goods are inextricably linked and relativistic to the Telos of the given structure. Then, it must be asked, which of these are morally relevant? Surely, e.g., a dutiful lion is not morally relevant, for the lion cannot rationally deliberate (in any meaningful sense). I would say, in short, that the directly morally relevant goods are the goods of moral agency; that is, the objective (and internal) goods to (and for) minds which are capable of rational deliberation as it relates to the Teleological structure immanent to such a mind qua personhood. Indirectly, all other teleological structures are morally relevant only insofar as they relate to this chief structure for persons. E.g., the virtues of the body, such as eating healthy, are morally relevant only insofar as they relate to sustaining the goods that are relative to the nature of a mind qua personhood; and, as such, are virtues that are relevant because they are required for the latter (such as needing to be healthy because ones body is their temple).
For you, I would ask: how are you distinguishing which teleological structures can support duties and which cant? Doesnt, e.g., a chess player have certain chess duties (such as not cheating to win) even though they are not directly morally relevant duties?
The word "reprimand" does not appear at all in the passages you quote, which hinders your argument for equivocation.
Quoting Bob Ross
What do you think it would mean to restrict duty to that which relates to law? Are you thinking of positive law or something?
Quoting Bob Ross
How do you suppose a teleological structure would support a duty?
Quoting Bob Ross
Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good. But the human race is not a community in any obvious sense. For the ancients the largest community would have been the polis, the city-state. Telling a human that they are responsible for every human would be like telling a bee that it is responsible for every bee, as opposed to the bees of its hive and especially its queen. The bee would have no reason to believe you.
Quoting Bob Ross
What is a community? It is something like a group of mutually self-sufficient people. Communal obligations arise in virtue of that interdependence. The parties to a war would be an example of separate communities.
Quoting Bob Ross
But that's circular, for you are appealing to your principle in order to establish duties.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't know where you are getting these ideas, but I don't think you will find them in my posts.
Quoting Bob Ross
I was about to make a joke about the animal kingdom, and then you went on to talk about dutiful lions. So you think that teleology entails duties and lions have duties?
Quoting Bob Ross
If lions cannot deliberate then I'm not sure what a dutiful lion is.
Quoting Bob Ross
The chess player has a hypothetical imperative to follow the rules of chess, but unless he has a duty to play chess he has no duty to follow the rules of chess. Yet if he promises someone to play chess with them, then he has a duty to follow the rules in virtue of his promise. In any case, hypothetical imperatives are not duties.
If the firefighter can save everyone then s/he has a duty to do that. You cannot have a duty to do the impossible, so it follows that if it is impossible to save everyone, then the firefighter cannot have a duty to do that.
I see what you are saying, but if Aquinas is just noting that no man can punish another who is not in their jurisdiction (to do so) but that they can restrain or stop a person from doing wrong; then this does not, per se, negate my point since invading a nation like North Korea is done primarily for stopping themnot punishing them.
I thought you were saying, by way of Aquinas, that a nation cannot invade another nation to stop them from doing immoral things to their own people because that nation has no jurisdiction over the other one (and thusly no duty to do it). Thats inherently about the legal system: the jurisdiction that they dont have is purely legalno?
Likewise, the polis is about legal jurisdiction: it is the city-state.
I dont know what positive law is.
It arises out of the roles an agent has within that teleological structuree.g., a good dad, a good son, a good mother, a good police officer, a good firefighter, a good judge, etc.
I agree, but in the eudaimonic sense of my good and not a modern egoistic sense. My good includes my rolessome of which I did not choose myselfand some of my roles as a moral agent are such thatbeing just, impartial, and properly respectful of lifeI should care about the cleanliness of the water on the whole planet for the sake of the entire moral project (which is to properly respect life in a nutshell).
I dont just have a duty to clean the water for my own community (as you mean it) but, rather, to preserve the human good and the good of all lifedont you agree? If you see a polluted stream that you knew with 100% certainty wouldnt pose any threat to your community but would to another, then you think you have no moral obligation, ceteris paribus, to do something about it? The human good (in terms of as a whole) doesnt bind you at alljust the communal good?
Not quite, this is, again, the straw man that I am arguing that every human is obligated to do the impossible; but I am saying that humans have duties to the human racenot just their own nation.
A nation wouldnt be a community then: they arent self-sufficient. They have to trade with other nations.
I dont think so. For you, would you say that if you didnt require the resources of anyone else in your nation (and thereby were living completely self-sufficiently), then you have no obligations to help other people? What if you are filthy rich and completely self-sufficient and there are people that are starving? It seems like under your view there would be no duty or obligation to help them because there is no interdependence.
I dont remember how I initially presented the principle, but it might have been. What I am saying is that there are duties which arise out of the roles one has in a teleological structure, some of which can be morally relevant, and that those duties do extend to the entirety of the moral project [of respecting lifeJustice and Fairness].
I used that example of purpose in anticipation (;
If I am right that duties arise out of the roles derived from the teleological structure and duty is living in proper agreement with those roles and being dutiful is fulfilling ones duties, then a lion is dutiful if the lion is fulfilling its roles within the teleological structure of being a lione.g., a good father lion, etc.
Voluntariness and choice are not the same thinggiven that I take the Aristotelian approach hereand duty is just acting in alignment with ones obligations; which can be done voluntarily without choice.
It is not a hypothetical imperative that the chess player is a good or bad chess player; nor that they are a dutiful or undutiful chess player. Just as much as a good human is not an expression of a hypothetical imperative.
If they are a chess player, then they are bound to follow the rules. Sure, they can decide to become a chess player or not, but that doesnt make the goodness, badness, and dutifulness which is relative to that teleological structure a hypothetical imperative for a chess player.
If I take your argument seriously, then it sounds like all forms of moral relativism must express merely hypothetical imperatives.
Well, to occupy a country militarily seems quite different from, "to restrain a man for a time from doing some unlawful deed there and then." I think you're really talking about an act of war, and I don't think just war theory would permit initiating a war or a war-like act simply for the sake of preventing some country from engaging in immorality. Some immoralities may justify wars, but certainly not all.
Quoting Bob Ross
My point is that, just as there is legal jurisdiction, so too is there moral jurisdiction. One is not morally justified in preventing every act of immorality, just as one is not legally justified in preventing every act of illegality. It is an analogy. I am not saying the moral and the legal are identical.
And no, the polis is not about legal jurisdiction. It is about mutual interdependence.
Quoting Bob Ross
Okay.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think we have a Christian duty to help humans qua human, but not a natural duty. Kant is attempting to rationalize Christian morality, and I don't think he succeeds. For example, what is your rationale? What does it mean that we have a duty "for the sake of the entire moral project?"
Presumably you would say we also have a duty to rational aliens on other planets, if they exist?
If I am traveling in China and I notice a source of water pollution, I do not think I am bound in natural justice to address it.
The reason the average Western citizen thinks he has duties to random strangers on the other side of the world is because he was reared in a Christian culture.
Quoting Bob Ross
I know, and again, "The bee would have no reason to believe you." Do you offer any reason for why we are responsible to people on the other side of the world?
Quoting Bob Ross
For wealth, but usually not for necessity. But a nation would generally be seen as a kind of para-community.
Quoting Bob Ross
Humans are pretty much always dependent, but if there were a non-social species then yes, it would not have communal obligations. One does not have communal obligations if one does not belong to a community.
Quoting Bob Ross
Supposing I have duties to random strangers on the other side of the world, in virtue of what teleological reality do I have those duties?
Quoting Bob Ross
A lion is bound by nature to care for its young, but not by reason. I don't see that Aristotle would attribute volition to lions. He says, "a voluntary act is one which is originated by the doer with knowledge of the particular circumstances of the act" (Nicomachean Ethics, III.i).
Quoting Bob Ross
Your point looks tautological, "If he wants to play the game of chess, then he must follow the rules of chess, because in order to play the game one must follow the rules." But you are trying to say that chess duties are not moral duties. I would say that if one breaks their promise to play chess then they are acting immorally, which can be done by cheating. I don't recognize non-moral duties.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, that sounds right to me.
In concise terms how would you address this criticism?
The nation is only justified relative to the moral facts: not their own inter-subjective dispositions.
I am not just speaking about war, but also diplomacy.
I agree.
I think we have a duty to help humans qua Justice. Our rational capacities mark us out, teleologically, as requiring of ourselves, among many other things, to be impartial, objective, and to bestow demerit and merit where it is deserved (objectively). Under my view, a human has a duty to be Just merely in virtue of being a person; and basic human rights are grounded in ones nature as a person, and so, yes, a rational alien species would have those same basic rights.
By the entire moral project, I mean the human good which, as humans, we must embark on; or, more abstractly, the person good, as persons, which we must embark on. Human good includes Justice because we are persons.
I am not arguing that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations; but we do have a responsibility to stop immoralities when they are grave enough. Under your view, I am not following why one would be obligated to even do this; as it is not their community. Under your view, is it not a just war to invade Nazi Germany? Is it not an obligation other nations would have because they have no duty to victims of another nation?
Well, thats my point: the whole of humanity is a para-community no differently. So if a person must be concerned about the pollution in their nation, then they should be concerned about it every else on planet earth.
I dont think he did either; because all he really noted is that reason requires universalizability of its maxims, and this doesnt entail any objective moral truths whatsoever.
I also find his categorical vs hypothetical imperatives kind of suspect.
But they would still have moral obligationsno? One such obligation would be to use their excess of resources to help other persons (and then other non-person animals). No?
Ultimately, your teleology as a human. You are a rational animal, which is a person. Persons must pursue truth, knowledge, honesty, open-mindness, justice, impartiality, objectivity, etc. in order to fulfill their rational telos.
Yes, but I dont think the lion is ignorant just because it lacks the sufficient ability to will in accordance with reason. My dog, e.g., wills in accordance with its own knowledge and conative dispositions all the time.
So is a human bound by nature to care for its young, does that mean that a woman who takes care of her babies is not dutiful to her maternal duties?
Or, perhaps, do you mean by bound by nature that it wills it not in accordance with its own will, but some other biological underpinning?
If the duty is not (indirectly or directly) related to our Telos as a mind; then it is an amoral duty. To your point, since we are analyzing everything relative to our Telos, everything truly morally relevant.
Lets take the most famous example of moral relativism that is a form of moral realism: Aristotelian Ethics. Do you believe that there are no categorical imperatives in Aristotles view? Perhaps not, as Kants idea of a hypothetical vs. categorical imperative is a bit shaky and useless, but there certainly are objective moral truths in it.
E.g., I would consider I should live a virtuous life to be a categorical imperative that is derivable from Aristotelian Ethics even though it is true relative to the Telos of living creatures.
The moral facts. I don't know what you are looking for here. I certainly am not going to try to enumerate all the moral facts to you. The point was that "might entails right" is false because the moral facts dictate what is right.
Do they?
In my view the most successful political ideologies have been those that have made what the Catholic church considered a sin to a virtue. Capitalism has made greed to be a virtue and socialism has made envy to be a virtue, something that is justified. We have moral relativity and we are finding even objective truth to be somehow problematic and start to use truth as a talking point, subjective
The fact is that these trends are part of the Western culture, as are other far positive aspects. Marxism-Leninism is part of the Western heritage. So is the woke ideology too is part of this Western culture. The Iranian revolution isn't doing so good, the young people of Iran don't embrace the ageing theocracy so well. The ideology that Al Qaeda and the Islamic State preach isn't Western, but we aren't following those. The idea that the Ummah has to be unified under a new Caliphate and the detrimental effects of the West should be erased isn't what the majority of the muslim people adhere to.
It is racist to think that values like democracy and human rights aren't universal today in the World. People only admit to authoritarian rule when that rule lavishly gives them prosperity and free services, which are usually rentier states. The Gulf States, Monaco or Brunei can be undemocratic monarchies as people are prosperous and in those small countries people can go to the monarch with their troubles. Saudi-Arabia shows the tensions that happen when the society is too large.
Yet otherwise people in generally want things that the West stands for. A good example is that the new rulers of Syria have shed away from radical Islamism (and hence ISIS has declared the HTS to be heretics) and seek to build stronger institutions and at least try to unite a country where the last tyrannical regime put the ethnic and religious groups against each other. It just shows how the radical ideology of Al Qaeda/IS has failed.
Yes, as I noted in my post. I did not follow how anything you said was relevant to it.
What is 'moral might'? I don't recognize any such conception.
Okay, but in your OP you talk about "forcible imposition" and "taking over North Korea," which look like warlike acts (i.e. imposing some value on a country by taking it over).
Quoting Bob Ross
So is your answer, "We must help the guy on the other side of the world because justice?" I don't see a concrete argument here. Why does justice require it?
Note how clear my argument was when I spoke of justice:
"Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good."
This was based on what Aquinas says, "it belongs to general justice to do good in relation to the community..."
Quoting Bob Ross
Why wouldn't you be? Why don't you require that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations? And isn't that precisely what we are doing when we intervene to prevent them from engaging in immoralities?
Quoting Bob Ross
We are not obligated in a natural sense.
Quoting Bob Ross
You are mixing together the notions of obligatory and permissible. What by natural virtue is supererogatory is neither impermissible nor obligatory.
Quoting Bob Ross
Well the point is that a para-community does not possess obligations. The U.S. is so large, diverse, and diffuse, that what is at stake is more like an alliance than the natural obligations of a community.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't think so. Not on natural premises. Else, what is the argument for why a person with abundant resources is obligated to help others?
Quoting Bob Ross
The first problem is the idea that I have a duty to be virtuous. To whom is this duty owed? Strictly speaking, one does not owe oneself anything, because they are but one agent, not two.
The second problem is the idea that justice requires us to fulfill the things you want us to fulfill. How does it do that? I am not aware of any kind of justice that obliges me to help people on the other side of the world.
Quoting Bob Ross
For Aristotle your dog does not have knowledge, and it therefore does not have volition.
Quoting Bob Ross
A human is bound by reason to care for its young, unlike a lion.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, biological instinct dictates that lions care for their young. They do not engage in knowledge, volition, choices, etc.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't take Aristotle to be a moral relativist.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, so to speak.
Correct; but war is the last resort. One of the central points of the OP was that it is a resort. I am merely elaborating that diplomacy and other tactics can be used; which would equally be banned if one is completely anti-imperialist.
Justices essence is fairness; which is about judging merit and demerit impartially and objectively. To do so, requires that one judge merit and demerit based off of substances (viz., natures), relations (e.g., you are the father, you must take care of the baby), and decisions (e.g., you decided to spend all your money, now live with the consequences); for anything else, which would have to be the upshot of conative dispositions, is not impartial and objective. The just man, thusly, assigns merit and demerit, e.g., because this thing is a person, a being that is alive, a being that has feelings, a being that is not alive, etc. and/or because this being decided to do this or that. The just man constructs a hierarchal structure of values based off of this sort of fairness, such that respecting persons is highest and non-living-things lowest (with everything in between).
One must help others, in general, ceteris paribus, because they are supposed to be just; and justice requires, as mentioned above, assigning merit and demerit impartially and objectively. Therefore, a just person should care, in general, about other people (and living things) in virtue that they are people (and are living things); because there nature sets them as worthy of protection.
The easiest way to demonstrate this is to think about the contrary: to believe that one shouldnt help a person when they could at no or little cost to themselves, is to squarely value a non-person over persons; which misses, at best, the nature of a person vs. a non-person. E.g., the super rich man who spends a million dollars on a yacht, for no purpose other than to enjoy it, is valuing the satisfaction and enjoyment of a yacht over persons (which he could have helped with the money). Valuing a non-living-thing over a person is to improperly understand the nature of a person. The fact that they have a rational will marks them out as the most valuable; and the fact they are alive, can feel pain, etc. makes them more valuable than non-life (like a yacht).
Like I said before, this equally applies to all of life. Nature is one inter-connected body. We cannot survive and realize our good without the good of Nature herself. E.g., thats why we hunt certain numbers of certain species to ensure the balance is stable. This equally applies to humanity as a whole, including itself in the whole of Nature. If I must care about mercury pollution in the water supply because my good is bound up with my communitys good (and vice-versa); then I should care about it because my good is bound up with Natures good (and vice-versa).
The reason I didnt make this argument above is because it isnt the ultimate reason why I think a rational agent is committed to the moral project of the good of life: like I stated above, it is the consequence of understanding properly how to analyze, impartially and objectively, the substances, relations, and decisions which exist in reality. I cannot be just and value a non-living-thing over a living-thing, all else being equal: that is to disrespect the nature of a living-thing in contrast to a non-living-thing. A living thing has a will (to some extent, albeit not necessarily proper), desires, emotions, can feel pain, etc.
Because by this you are envisioning, I would say, a nation babysitting another nation; which is not what I am talking about. On the contrary, a nation does have a responsibility to take care of another nation if it does not pose a substantial risk to their duties to their own people; and that is why we do not go around advocating that nations, which have their own issues and are not in a position to help other nations, to take care of other nations. If a nation was super-abundant and rich and could give their excesses to helping an extremely poor nationand at no risk of nuclear war or something likein principleI would say they have a duty to do so. But that duty does not supercede their more local duties.
This is no different than how, e.g., a father has a duty to take care of his kids and to care about water pollution for his community, but if the two conflict then he must uphold the former over the latter. Since fathers do not tend to have a super-abundance of resources and time, we do not generally advocate that fathers should spend an enormous amount of time solving water pollution: they dont have the time or resources. They fit into society with certain more immediate roles that they must focus on.
Theres a hierarchy to duties.
Thats fair: I guess I would agree with that; as, by my own logic, a nation is not obligated to go to war with another nation to stop them from doing something egregious if it poses a significant risk to the integrity of their own prosperity. However, I can reword this to get at the main point: would you say that it is not obligatory for a nation who could stop Nazi Germany without any risk to their own prosperity, if that were possible, to do so? I think it would be, in principle.
So, to be clear, you are saying that I do not actually have a duty to care about water pollution in a state of the US which I do not live because the US is not a proper community?
This is a slippery slope. I can make the same argument for my local county vs. my state. They are just as much a para-community; and that was my original point.
Duties arise out of roles one has; and one has roles for themselvesno? E.g., one of my roles to myself is that I need to just with myselfno?
I dont see why duty arises out of roles one has to others.
What do you mean? Justice just requires us to be fair.
I disagree with Aristotle on that point then. Evolution makes no leaps.
I am asking: what if a woman takes care of her young merely in virtue of an unbearable, primal, and motherly urge to do it? Arguably, a lot of mothers out there operate (at least sometimes) on primal motherly urges and are not committing themselves to their motherly duties because they rationally deliberated about it. In that case, then, your view seems to dictate that the woman would not be being dutiful because it is not being done through reason.
I agree that they dont engage in volition in accordance with reason; but theres also volition in accordance with conative dispositions. I can will as an upshot of my passions, or my reasons for doing so. Animals have volition in the lesser sense; and knowledge in the sense that they also formulate beliefs about their environment (to some degree). Have you seen how smart some birds are? Belgian Malinois are way too smart to believe that they have no knowledge; unless by knowledge you mean something oddly specific.
I thought moral relativism meant something else: nevermind.
Not so. People who argue for institutions like the UN or ICC to have more power aren't imperialists. Imperialism starts with an empire, which starts with one state. You perfectly can have anti-imperialist demanding a New World Order of their liking.
Who is against any diplomatic measures against states like North Korea are isolationists, that see their isolationism as ideological basis.
Quoting Bob Ross
So better North Korea have those nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach Hawaii, if not the Western parts of the Continental United States.
ICBMs are the logical way, to keep the @Bob Ross away. :wink:
I'm struggling to find an argument here. We must help others because they are worthy of protection? Is that the idea?
Quoting Bob Ross
Does this relate to your ideas about merit and demerit?
The difficulty is that yachts should not need to be brought in when we are speaking about justice. If I owe you $15,000, then I owe you $15,000 whether or not I buy a yacht. And if I don't owe you $15,000, then I don't owe you $15,000 whether or not I buy a yacht. Do I owe it to you to prefer you to a yacht? I take it that the preferential option for the poor is a Christian principle, not a principle of natural justice.
You seem to have a principle whereby wealthy people owe poor people money, simpliciter.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would say that a greedy person lacks beneficence, but need not lack justice. It would be virtuous for the wealthy to give to the poor, but it is not owed in justice. The wealthy is not in the poor's debt (unless, say, their wealth was won at the unjust expense of the poor).
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't think so. If I am vacationing in China or on a deserted island and I find a source of water pollution, I have no duty to the community to rectify it. And it really won't matter. "Nature" is not something I need attend to in itself. For example, if we find a source of water pollution on Mars, we have no duty to rectify it.
Quoting Bob Ross
The extreme pacifist types who try to do such a thing come up against the fact that it is impossible to avoid killing organisms, however small they may be. But I think it is a misuse of words to say that, say, a vegetarian is more just than a meat eater. Someone might claim that the vegetarian is more just insofar as they accord animals their proper rights. But the whole question revolves around whether animals have these rights, or whether human beings have a right to always receive money from those who have more money. I am not convinced that they do have such rights, and if you're not talking about rights then I'm not sure you're talking about justice.
Quoting Bob Ross
So here again we have this strange relativization of dues. You think that a super-abundant nation has a duty to babysit other nations, and that the only reason no one has a duty to babysit is because no one is super-abundant, no?
Quoting Bob Ross
You seem to think that everything we ought to do is a duty. Thus a person ought to be merciful, beneficent, witty, healthy, and generally virtuous; therefore we have a duty to be these things. I think you are stretching the meaning of words like 'duty', 'justice', etc., much too far. Any common and reasonable notion of justice would say that there are bad acts which are not unjust, and there are good acts which are not just.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, and let me put it this way. There is heroism. There is going above and beyond (supererogation). Now if someone goes out of their way to stop a bully or malefactor when they have no duty to do so, we call them a hero. We call them virtuous. We call them beneficent. If someone does their duty we say, "He did his job. He did what he was expected to do." These are not the same thing.
I'm not convinced that there is any room for supererogation in your moral system.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yep.
Quoting Bob Ross
Maybe, but you can't reasonably claim that your town is not a community. The slippery slope ends at some point.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't think so. I can try to make a promise to myself, but breaking it is not injustice in any strict sense.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think that happens. At the very least the woman is not impeding her natural instincts, and that not-impeding is praiseworthy. But in general I don't think human acts are separable into instinctual acts and rational acts. There is a kind of homogeneity, where rationality infuses and includes all of our acts (except for perhaps extreme cases of insanity and the like).
Quoting Bob Ross
It is not oddly specific to exclude knowledge from animals. The burden of proof is on you to find philosophers who think that animals have knowledge, beliefs, responsibilities, duties, etc. You are presenting an idiosyncratic view in this.
Quoting Bob Ross
Okay.
Your response was good; and I need to think about it more and get back to you. There's two particularly challenging problems I haven't thought about much before. (1) The first being that justice can be viewed in two seemingly irreconcilable ways (and this reminded me of After Virue by MacIntyre, as he outlined in well in there): (A) in terms of some account of what and how a given person is entitled to in virtue of what they have legitimately acquired and earned, or (B) in terms of some account of the equality of the claims of each person in respect of basic needs and of the means to meet such needs. (2) The second being that moral naturalism doesn't seem to afford any notion of selfless justice whatsoever; instead, the only kind of naturalistic justice seems to be the need to socialize.
With respect to #1, it seems like your view of justice is squarely, although I don't want to put words in your mouth, A. Whereas, my attempted rebuttals invoke a sense of B; hence the disagreement. I am not so sure now if Justice is like A, B, or some sublated version I haven't thought of yet.
With respect to #2, if there is truly no way to naturally ground selfless justice, then I think you are right to point out that the only justice which one would participate in is the kind which is required by way of social goods; which would be essentially the relation between communal and individual goods. I am not so sure here either that naturalism can't afford an answer, but if it does I would reckon it would have to be grounded in the rational aspect of our nature (so Kant comes to mind here).
I am curious what @180 Proof has to say, although I am guessing it will be on consequentialistic lines of thought.
Let me outline a basic example so that we are all on the same page. Imagine you are completely self-sufficient living up in the mountains; viz., you are able to live off of the land, which is no one else's property, and need absolutely no social interactions between people to realize your own good (e.g., perhaps you are a bit anti-social). You come across an injured person in the woods, in need of desperate help. The question is twofold:
(C) Do you have any natural duty to help them?
(D) Would not helping them be an act of natural injustice?
As it stands now, I can think of no reason why one would have a natural duty to them at all; nor why it would be unjust. I feel like it is unjust, but I am starting to think that is the mere result of the Christian conscience in me from my forebearers.
Here is Aristotle on justice in the narrower sense of a particular virtue:
Quoting Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.2
Of course this is slightly different from your division.
I would say that for Aristotle the relevant sort of selflessness arises not by social contract, but by the fact that humans are social organisms. This interdependence creates a natural solicitude for members of the family or community. For example, rather than caring for one's spouse out of selfish motive, one's identity stretches to encompass one's spouse, or one's children, or the members of one's community. If my sense of self expands to include my family, and I act in favor of the common familial good, am I still acting selfishly? We can debate that, but it is not individualistic selfishness. At the same time, it does not extend to every family or community.
So I think an Aristotelian natural ethic is quite robust. Its just that Christianity says things like this, Why, one will hardly die for a righteous manthough perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5). This goes beyond sacrificing for ones friends or family members or community, and I think the modern world would do well to discern when it is drawing on religious premises and when it is drawing on natural reason.
Quoting Bob Ross
There are different ways to go with this. Classically equality before a community is a matter of distribution, and in that sense the one in charge of distributing honors, or wealth, or rights, is the one who is required to be just. So there is a kind of equality vis-a-vis the community, via distributive justice. But on a naturalistic conception, who is in charge of distributing resources such that they are equally available to Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia? There is no one who is currently in charge (except for, say, God). Therefore it's not clear how the naturalist can make a claim like this, although I think there are certain limited claims that can be made about the equality of all those possessing a human nature, which you have begun to make.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I would say that failing to help them would be bad/unvirtuous, but not unjust (unless by "unjust" we only mean bad/unvirtuous). I think even the injured person would recognize this somewhat, in the sense that they would plead for beneficence rather than demand justice.
(There has been a good deal of discussion in the last five years on the topic of human dignity and infinite human dignity. For example, Alasdair MacIntyre's lecture on, "Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?")
You & co seem to be conflating normative ethics (re: interpersonal harms) with applied ethics (re: structural/policy injustices), Bob. Consider this post reply to @Leontiskos from the thread The Breadth of the Moral Sphere
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/899132
No worries at all: I don't expect you to read the entire thread (:
I read that comment you linked, but I am, unfortunately, not following. How am I conflating normative with applied ethics? Are you saying my thought experiment was invalid (on grounds of some sort of conflation)?
I will think about it and get back to you.
As for imperialism, its methods are a proven method of advancement for the imperialistic power -- be it the Romans or the British, Mughal or Dutch, this dynasty or any of the other numerous empires that have arisen and fallen. People dither over colonialism and imperial conquest, but where would much of the world be today if no ambitious group had set out to capture as much territory as possible, and in doing so, gained glory, riches, and power to fuel its cultural development?
Every culture might be equal in the endeavor to meet basic human requirements, but that's a low bar. Some cultures are better than others--Not necessarily better at any given instant, but on average, superior cultures get better over time. Inferior civilizations get worse over time.
I've was lucky enough to be born in a culture which benefitted from a long history of colonialism, imperialism, and western supremacy. Had I been born in a culture which was the recipient of the hob-nailed boot, I'd look at things differently, I suppose.
If a people want to get ahead, nationalism, imperialism, supremacy, dominance, force -- that's how it's done.
Inferior civilizations simply change also peacefully: they copy the ways of other civilizations and adapt, with likely the last bastion being simply the language. Even that can wither away peacefully. Globalization has given us this already. In Antiquity people from different civilizations dressed quite differently, unlike today you couldn't in an airport define what "civilization" people come from by looking at their clothes. Hence there's a large unifying process happening through globalization, which is actually peaceful and voluntary.
Yet usually this is done by force and violence. A minority is simply not permitted to teach it's own language in school and the identity that makes a people a nation ir a religious group different is repressed. Especial empires do this because empires fight against the nationalism of the people they have subjugated. Empires only admit the nationalism they themselves are founded on. It's extremely rare that the empire would be so enlightened that it would accept the identities it has subjugated and would create a higher identity that all would belong to. The best successful example of this are the English with the creation of a British identity that is also accepted by the Welsh and the Scots and with some Northern Irish. Even if the British identity was made also for the Irish, the brutal history between the Irish and the English didn't make it possible.
The simple fact is that empires typically resort to violence, repression and all the negative actions that makes imperialism such a negative word and do not have much if any superior aspects in their culture other than the needed military might. What did the largest empire in the World, the Mongol Empire, really give us in hindsight? Not much.
Best example is the empire that we have still among us alive and kicking: Russia. Russian has an imperial identity, it isn't a nation state. If one understands this, then everything that Putin is doing makes sense. If one is totally ignorant about this, then one can make the mistake of thinking that Russia is a country just like any other European country. China would be similar too as it has had waves of being united and separated nations also.
Unfortunately the term empire is used in a variety of ways and hides the classic definition of a state that rules over a group of countries and people.
Yes, because, as any experienced attorney or judge will attest to: "justice" is not normative (re: micro bottom-up > well-being (i.e. utilitarian)) as you seem to conceive of it, Bob; in a naturalistic moral framework¹, "justice" is applied (re: macro top-down > nonzero sum conflict resolution (i.e. consequential)).
(2023) first 2 sentences ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/857773 [1]
This is an astute observation that most people don't seem to acknowledge anymore. Nietzsche pointed this out, correctly, that all good things in human history have been the product of bloody and gruesome events. That's not to say we should keep doing it for because of that, but it is worth acknowledging.
It seems to me that you could just as easily make the case that good things have overwhelmingly involved cooperation, loyalty, trust, and love. It's a selective history.
At any rate, you might enjoy Dante. He takes a lot from Aristotle, but he also has a very developed philosophy of history and sees a major unifying role for empire. He has De Monarchia, which is an explicit apology for world-empire, but these ideas are also all over the Commedia.
Hegel would be another good example, and he has some ideas about balancing particularism (perhaps through federalism and strong local governance) and a strong state. However, given he is writing in the long shadow of the Thirty Years War, he cannot seem to find it in himself to discard the post-Westphalian state system, even though his thought would seem to suggest a world-state.
Here's what I am thinking. Justice is about, fundamentally, respecting other members of the community (or social structure in which one is a member, such as a family for example) such that each member is getting what they rightly deserve and not getting what they do not deserve.
Let's revisit both A and B conceptions of Justice:
A is missing the communal aspect of justice, namely that each person is owed resources, titles, roles, etc. not just in terms of their merit of activity but also relative to (1) the resources that the community can provide reasonably and (2) the nature of those members (viz., persons). A, then, is an incomplete libertarian-style conception of Justice that does not work per se. E.g., it could be that one person has legitimately acquired all the food but that it is unjust to let everyone else starve because that person would still nevertheless not be caring properly for their community (which they are still inter-dependent on): since, for Aristotle, a central element to Justice is respecting each person in society with the understanding that the good of the one is dependent on the good of the whole, it follows that the food hoarder would be being unjust (in this case) even though they have not violated A-Justice.
B is missing that the merit of actions is an aspect of justice, namely that each person is not equal simpliciter merely because they have certain inalienable rights (nor because they share a Telos): some people provide more value to the community's good and so deserve a bigger share of the goods for themselves. E.g., a person that takes on more responsibility and risk in the community which, in turn, furthers the community's good (proportionally to how much it furthers the person's good) deserves more goods (proportionally) to a person who chooses not to; and so if all the community does is reward people based off of their basic needs as a person, a human, etc. then there are bound to be people who are unjustly being given less than they deserve (proportionally) relative to the value they are bringing to the community itself. Thusly, a person can be B-Just while clearly being not only A-Unjust but also unjust (in the broader sense I described above).
So, beyond negating A and B conceptions of Justice, what exactly does each person deserve? I am don't think there is any exact moral principles that can be deployed, but, rather, taking the Aristotelian approach, Justice is fundamentally about the virtue of being just; and so I have to accept that it is impossible to come up with an exact equation that can solve the problems with A and B justice. Instead, all I can say is the general definition I gave above (which squarely holds justice as community-centric) and note that A and B styles of Justice don't quite capture it.
There are basic things that can be noted, of course: people have inalienable rights (in a deontological fashion), if the community has the resources to suffice the basic needs of each member than it should, each person beyond those basic needs (that can be reasonably fulfilled by the community) must be earned by way of merit, etc.
In terms of my example of the self-sufficient man, I think you are right: it would be a matter of beneficence and benevolence and not justice. One would have no duty nor obligation to help them in the forest, even if they could just snap their fingers to instantly heal them; but beneficence and benevolence are important virtues that are closely connected to justice (I would say) as doing good and being good willed are necessary in order to properly care for the community and the over-arching structures that the community is dependent on (like Nature). So it would follow that, ceteris paribus, the self-sufficient person who could snap their fingers to help the injured person would do so if they are virtuous because their goods are still indirectly dependent on the goods of the whole system of Nature functioning properly. If we were to say that this person somehow was radically self-sufficient to the extent that they could survive even if Nature died out, then they would not be being vicious by not helping.
Same thing, I think, with things like animal cruelty. Beyond the injustice which would arise from violating a person's property by torturing or killing their pet, it is not something, even outside the purview of justice, that a virtuous person would do because they need to be benevolent and beneficent.
Thoughts?
Interesting: so it sounds like you are a bit of an Aristotelian too. How would you define Justice? Do you see any solution to the A and B conceptions of Justice that I noted?
For reference, here they are:
Wouldn't you agree, that justice has a normative and applied aspect? There is what is just ideally (which is normative ethics), and there is what can be applied in practical law (which is applied ethics)---no?
E.g., everyone should be going the speed limit but there's no way for the government to monitor that in the car (other than cops checking with their speed guns) without violating people's right to privacy.
Also, why would "macro top-down" justice require consequentialism?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You are both right. Take the United States: Good soil, geographic advantages, forests, huge mineral deposits, etc. were tremendous advantages, gained through colonialism, enslavement, conquest, dispossession of native people, and military power. Bloody and gruesome, but that's how it was done. On the other hand cooperation, loyalty, trust, and love -- all good things -- were indispensable in the development of the scientific / industrial revolutions, growth of agriculture, trade, industry, and culture which brought about our prosperous present state. .
My preferential option is always for cooperation, loyalty, trust and love. That said, our species lapses into violence all too often, and there are too many cases to need a citation.
Well, we could always ask: "could good historical epochs always have been better if there was more prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as faith, hope, and love?"
I think the answer is yes. There is no need to make vices into virtues.
I dont see how this contradicts what I said: the bloodiest and most gruesome of human events require all those traits you mentioned within the in-group.
Thanks: I will take a look.
I have Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic, but Ive never been able to penetrate into whatever the h*** the man was trying to convey with his obscure writings :worry: .
I am not saying vices are virtues; but the vast majority of the major historical progressions were so rich, rapid, and monumental because of the sheer brutality involved. The ends justifying the means is always a faster and better route to achieve the end result, notwithstanding its immorality.
To me, cooperation, loyalty, trust, and love are all traits which are required for any ideology or project to take root and sprout....it seems like you are both trying to formulate a dichotomy between these traits and those required for brutal conquest when, in reality, they are the same. Some virtues are required for evil just as much as good (e.g., the courageousness of the Nazi).
To your point though, it is worth asking: "have there been any peaceful and ethical movements that progresses just as rapidly and richly as the many barbaric ones that came before (or after) it?". Very few; in fact, I would say the only ones are the ones that are barbaric anti-barbarism: the violence of peace. E.g., Ghandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., etc.
What about the Dutch, one might ask. They seem like a peaceful, non-imperialistic society. Except, that they fought for their independence from Spain; they did establish imperial operations overseas; I'm not sure whether or not they were internally repressive at various points. It seems like they were unusually tolerant at a time when most kingdoms were not particularly tolerant.
American Indian tribes are fairly often suggested as peaceful and unwarlike. Except they, like humans everywhere, resorted to violence against other tribes when that was the most expedient option.
You know that painting, The Peaceable Kingdom, where the predators and prey are lounging about in each other's close company? As one cynic put it, "The lion and the lamb may lie down together, but the lion will sleep a lot better than the lamb will." Lions stay predators and lambs stay prey. Strong countries tend to be predators, and weak countries tend to be prey.
Humans can display a great deal of solidarity, cooperation, loyalty and trust when either a sufficiently dangerous threat or an irresistible opportunity presents itself. Americans could unite to defend ourselves from the British, or unite to happily seize the northern 60% of Mexico, without later regrets.
I'll cut straight to the point: I believe in good common sense. Is it perfect? No. But other than science, it's the best we got so far. That, and perhaps some forms of entertainment.
Can I kindly request that you put me up to speed on the state of this Thread? Where is the discussion at, currently? What is the "Main Thing" (so to speak) that you are currently discussing, and how could I possibly contribute, either constructively or destructively? Forgive my mannerisms and figures of speech, I'm "simple folk", if you want to call it that.
How about international cooperation?
As usually we are obsessed in our focus on Superpowers and Great Powers and conflicts, we miss a lot that has been truly dramatic and peaceful, movements that have been a success by cooperation by independent states. European integration has pacified the union members (which don't look at each other as potential military threats and adversaries). The idea of EU came strong after the Continent had suffered two World Wars, something that anti-EU populist will totally ignore.
Or Nordic cooperation, where as early as 1952 Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland abolish the requirement for passports for travel between them. Or what the UN has also achieved, even if the organization is very bureaucratic and inefficient. In every Continent there is a desire for cooperation and for trade. The idea of shutting the country out of the World isn't popular anymore, as Japan tried to do earlier (and actually places like Oman, where one sultan was a very conservative guy who banned the use of bicycles in the 20th Century.) The wide assortment of international organizations that sovereign states participate has to be in it's entirety a noteworthy development.
It also begs the question just what values and agendas are shared in such way we could speak of Global or Universal values, not just Western values.
Yes, in the most violent of displays of peaceviz., in the most radical and extreme methods of peaceful protest ever concocted. I was merely pointing out that even the rare occurrences where peace has the same swift and monumental effect of aristocratic elites, it still has that aristocratic shadow .it is perfectly plausible that if Ghandhi were not so radically peacefulbut rather peaceful in a more moderate and reasonable sensethen his whole project wouldnt have made a single dent in human history. It was the uno-reverse card of showing people how barbaric someone could be in the face of absolute kindness that had a bone-chilling affect.
I dont remember much about Dutch history, but I would guess that they havent done anything monumental towards the course of history. We are not talking about countries that merely survived but, rather, plummeted humanity into a new age or significantly expedited the development process. I am not sure if the Dutch count here
Ive heard otherwisee.g., cannibalsbut even if this is true it is obvious that they are weak and only exist still because sympathy and tolerance of all human life has been thoroughly cultivated into humanitys conscience. In fact, if they are examples of the product of anti-aristocratic values, then it only serves my point .
Yes, and they have tended, throughout history, to come together at the expense of a weak out-group...no?
We have entered an unprecedented age, where we now find aristocratic values itself disgusting; and it has had its strengths and weaknesses.
I think this is why so many people do not like Israel and Russia for their conquests: it is very aristocratic.
I don't see much merit in either of these conceptions. Are you pulling them out of thin air? Or is there some thinker or tradition that you are getting these from?
Quoting Bob Ross
I would have the same concern about this. Where is it coming from? If we look at <a dictionary> I don't really see your conception. Or if we do, it is only there in a vague way.
We need a better starting point for a definition.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is probably the kernel of the strangeness in your thought. This conception of justice finds no basis anywhere in the Merriam Webster definitions above. "If you can do X then you are required to do so in justice." That is a very strange claim to my ears.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, but commissions tend to be more unjust than omissions, and this is why justice was classically concerned primarily with "negative rights."
I got those from After Virtue by MacIntyre:
(After Virtue, Ch. 17 Justice as Virtue: Changing Conceptions, p. 246)
I find it plausible that justice requires a balance between A and B types of justice because they are the two extremes in a community: the one, to wit, the proper assessment of individual merit and the other, to wit, the proper assessment of natures (of members). One focuses only on the individual in terms of agency, and the other solely on the needs of each member.
How would you define justice, then?
Well, dictionaries are notoriously inadequate for formal discussions. Nothing about the definitions in the Webster dictionary for justice suffice in telling us what exactly justice is getting at.
My definition of justice is the study and practice of properly treating other persons; my initial description of justice is what you quoted:
I am describing justice fundamentally in terms of the relation between community and individual exactly because the Aristotelian conception of justice arises only exactly due to us being social organisms. Justice cant be, i.e., if Aristotle is right that justice is a virtue only because we must facilitate it to fulfill the social aspect(s) of our nature, fundamentally about merely respecting individuals (such as is the case in libertarian notions of justice) because it makes no reference to the community or over-arching structure which ones goods are interdependent upon.
Why doesnt it fit? Heres one definition from your link:
Justice has an element to it that is relative to the resources and circumstances of the community. E.g., it is unjust to arbitrarily or unduly prevent someone from driving on roads, but depending on the conditions of the roads what is considered unduly here may change; it is currently unjust to force people, where I live, to not use as much water in their homes, but if there is a drought then it may no longer be unjust; food rationing is unjust right now, but not necessarily if we start running low; etc.
Do you deny any circumstantial aspects to justice?
I guess, to a certain extent. However, there are multiple levels to laws (e.g., local, state, federal, etc.) and policies that come into play which are circumstantial to some extent. We have this negative right to, e.g., make this policy for our private business; but might not have it in, e.g., in martial law.
Okay, so Nozick vs. Rawls (and probably capitalism vs. communism in MacIntyre's thought - property rights vs. redistribution of wealth).
Quoting Bob Ross
MacIntyre's point of departure is that the two conceptions are incompatible, no? Even if there is some common ground between them?
Quoting Bob Ross
I would follow Aristotle, Cicero, or Aquinas. As quoted above:
Quoting Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.2
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Leontiskos
My first objection is to this, "If you can provide the basic needs of X then you are required to do so in justice." (Where in this case X = members of the community.) I'm not sure what legitimate conception of justice could ever support such a claim.
The second objection, to Rawls, is that cosmic justice is not justice. There is no duty to enforce cosmic justice. If someone on the other side of the world needs $100 from me, I have no duty to provide it, because cosmic justice isn't real. That someone is born shorter and therefore is not as good at basketball is not "unfair" in any realistic sense. There is no cosmic court of redress to which that person can bring their suit of unfairness. Distributive justice pertains to communities, and the cosmos is not a community. What Rawls and post-Christians want is a court of cosmic justice that we are in charge of running.
Of course, there are theological possibilities that could introduce cosmic duties, but I don't see this coming from natural reason.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm not sure. Consider your drought example. Does the community owe the members water or not? If the community owes the members water, then the drought is immaterial to this fact, and the community which has made itself an arm of cosmic justice has a duty to sort out the cosmic factors (and perhaps get water from elsewhere).
The confusion lies in the idea that distributive justice functions in the same way that commutative justice does. Distributive justice has to do with an impartial and fair distribution of things among the community ("honour, wealth, etc."). The only legitimate claim is therefore something like, "I did not get a fair share in relation to the rest of the community." Absolute claims are excluded, such as, "I did not get healthcare, and you have a duty to provide me with healthcare."
Quoting Leontiskos
So compare a negative right, "You have a right not to be stolen from," to a positive right, "You have a right to a free ice cream cone every day." The first right is not so difficult to create - it only requires us to prosecute thieves. So we need to maintain a justice system that prosecutes thieves. What about the second right? It is a bit more difficult to create, as we need to manufacture 330 million ice cream cones every day. This should be taken as a kind of reductio ad absurdum. Something which requires a promise is not a right, and we do not have a distributive right to any absolute positive quantity whatsoever, be it ice cream cones or healthcare or social security (Social Security is on point given that the U.S. fund will be insolvent by 2033, at which point we will literally have people claiming a right to non-existent money. Hopefully cosmic Santa Claus refills that fund!).
(MacIntyre's A and B are both precritical notions of justice or fairness. They need to be submitted to criticism before they pass muster.)
Yes, and I agree.
I dont have a problem with this view, but I am surprised you dont. This definition is also not found in the Webster dictionary, which you used as a critique of mine.
Also, Aristotles description, like mine, has an interdependency on the community and the individual such that there is a need for redress in private transactions and the distribution of honor, wealth, etc. which was my point before:
Well, thats what I am getting at; and you referenced it here as a type of justice; so I am a bit confused: that seems to agree with me.
Yes, in terms of what you would call commutative justice, I see your point: they either must have a positive right to water or not
However, in terms of what you would call distributive justice, it seems like if the community, e.g., has an abundance of water then they shouldnt hoard it for the ruling elitethat would be unjust.
Moreover, this distributive justice seems connected still to what one is owed. Viz., it is only unjust for the community to hoard the abundance of water because they have duties, as the community, which include properly distributing resourcesso that is owed to the individual in a sense.
Thats fair: negative rights a lot easier to uphold than positive ones; but I think we both agree we have positive rights. Take the water example: if you were denied any water simply because the government didnt want to give it to you (perhaps they want to use that water for a water slide party for the ruling elites) even though you are doing your duly fair share of work in societywhich we could think of it in terms of you having the money to pay for the water billthen that is unjust because you have a positive right to the water.
I think the trouble comes in, as you rightly pointed out, when we think of positive rights just like negative ones. E.g., when we think of our right life like our right to have water when it isnt being distributed fairly. This ends up conflating the right which can never be breached with a straw man version of the water right such that one thinks that the government is required to give them water simpliciter. Thats not what we are saying here.
I have been following Aristotle (or Aquinas, who follows Aristotle) from the very beginning of this discussion. The problem then as now is that your conception is not Aristotelian, so I am wondering what it is. Is it Christian? Marxist? Rawlsian?
For example you want to say:
None of this is true for Aristotle. Distributive/communal justice does not entail any of this.
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
I think this is too vague to do any work. "Justice is about respecting other members of the community with respect to desert." Fine, but what questions does that answer? You think the guy on the other side of the world deserves $100 and I don't. We haven't gotten anywhere.
Quoting Bob Ross
Finding no philosophical or political antecedent, I looked to the dictionary. In my case the philosophical antecedent is clear: Aristotle.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, so for example, the community has a duty to properly distribute the revenue it receives via taxation, and the individual is owed a proper distribution. But he is not owed water qua water, but rather water insofar as it comes under the heading of proper distribution of communal resources. And the community is not something over and against the individual; but rather the whole of which he is a part.
But from this we do not get your ideas about duties to people on the other side of the world, or duties of the wealthy to the poor, etc.
Quoting Bob Ross
Well I would say we do not have a positive right to water insofar as it is an "absolute positive quantity" or insofar as it is a good or service simpliciter. We only have a right to water insofar as we have a right to proper distribution and proper distribution happens to include water in our governmental setup. Think of it this way: the only reason I have a right to half a pizza is because you and I bought it together. If we hadn't bought it together I wouldn't have a right to half of it.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's right, but when you say that the poor have a right to the wealthy's wealth, it looks like you are saying they have a right simpliciter. I see no private-commutative right between the wealthy person and the poor person. In fact I don't really think there are positive commutative rights at all, although everything I am saying is simplified a bit. Aristotle's "redress in private transactions" obviously does not function apart from redress (and this does not include cosmic redress!). Probably the only (positive) right to goods and services that one has is a qualified right to goods and services, insofar as those goods and services come under distributive justice. The right to half a pizza only exists insofar as the purchase or production of pizza is a joint venture.
This is good: you are making me think about this more.
I would like to think it is Aristotelian; but lets find out.
I think I agree that Justicelike youis about distribution and commutation. So lets size this up to what Ive said before.
I agree, this isnt true; because justice would be relative to the community, and the nation would be the highest community. EDIT: An interesting question is, though, why would we note hope to unite all people under one law in order to bring about this sort of justice (which would apply)? It seems like a loophole to your critique here.
This isnt true as well if we are talking about how citizens should treat each other and not what goods the government should be providing. More on that later.
I would say it is unjust for the community not to fulfill members needs when it can sustainably; and it would be unjust in the sense of distributive justicenot commutative justice.
Think about it: if theres a starving orphan child, then it is a part of the communitys job to take care of that childat least until it can grow up to be an adult for themselves; and if the community could no longer afford (through perhaps taxation or whatever resource streams they have) to take care of orphans, then there is no injusticein any senseif they starved to death (because other families have duties to their own childrennot random childrenand no citizen is obligedmorally or legallyto take care of some random child (even if it is a good thing to do).
Heres the interesting part: distributive justice seems to require the community to take care of that childif the resources are available in a sustainable and reasonable sense: do you agree?
This gets interesting though, as most people would disagree with this, prima facie, because most people would say one has a duty to keep an orphan baby, which was dropped off anonymously at their house, as long as required until the authorities arrive or despite any authority ever being on their way.
Agreed; but how do we decipher what distributive justice entails? I started re-reading Aristotle to try and get some clues. It seems like the communitys distribution of goods based off of trying to promote the human good (e.g., institutionalized marriage [in the sense of giving tax breaks and incentives], foster care system, CPD, etc.); so why wouldnt it be obligated to give a base income, e.g., for each citizen if that were feasible (given the abundance of resources)?
It seems like why you and I wouldnt go for universal base income, is because it, in fact, doesnt work and is not sustainable; but what if it were? In principle, would that be distributatively just?
The rest of what you said I agree with; so I do not feel the need to comment on those.
EDIT: I forgot to mention another thing: although it is not unjust to choose to not help a person who is not of your nation; I do still find it potentially lacking in beneficence, which could result in it being immoral albeit not unjust. Of course, this is relative to whether the given case is making them inbeneficent or not; but assuming it is, then we would have a reason to say they shouldn't be doing that.
:up:
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
Okay. :up:
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, I think so.
Quoting Bob Ross
How do you understand the relationship between the individual and the community? I would say that if the community is taking care of the child, then some individual(s) is taking care of the child.
Quoting Bob Ross
Here is Aristotle:
Quoting Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.3
-
Quoting Bob Ross
The UBI is an interesting example. For Aristotle the standard of distributive justice is the measure of equality set out above. I'm not sure how Aristotle would view a welfare state, but it would probably be considered qua democratic rule.
The basic question is whether the UBI provides an equal distribution, and it's fairly clear that it doesn't, especially because it is meant as a form of welfare. Welfare is "merited" (on this conception) in light of need; and therefore to give everyone money when not everyone is in need is unjust and unfair. But the UBI crowd is full of strange ideas. To this they might say, "It is unjust, but it is less unjust and wasteful than other means" (which I believe is false).
Quoting Bob Ross
Sure, I agree.
The Dutch have had their colonial wars, but it's usually said that the Dutch have been quite smart when it has come to their colonies. But they tried to hold on to their Indonesian colonies, and had their own lost colonial war also.
It would take massive ignorance of world history not to recognize the role the Netherlands has played in the world since 1500.
Thats fair, but those individuals would be sanctioned by the governmentif not public servants themselves. My dilemma here is not about public servants nor people who volunteer (and thusly bind themselves) to raise orphans. The question is whether or not Aristotle can justify any sort of duty or obligation for a standard citizenwhich is not actively in the course of their public duties which may relateto take care of a child that is dropped off at their porch. Maybe, just maybe, there is a duty in the sense that a citizen must call the appropriate authorities and take care of the baby until they arrive; but most people would go beyond that say that even if there were no authorities coming that the person has a duty to take care of that child. What do you think? In terms of justice, can Aristotle rightly claim that it would unjust for the citizen, in the above example, to turn the other way? I see how it would potentially be inbeneficient and malevolent; but not unjust.
The problem I have with that quote, which I read as well in the Eudemian and Nichomachean Ethics, is that Aristotle is being too vague. All he is saying there is that a part of justice is giving people proportionate goods to their merits. Ok, I dont think anyone disagrees with that. The question is: how does one determine merit and demerit in this kind of manner where everyone gets a proportionate amount?
Thats true, and I agree to an extent; but it gets finicky real quick. E.g., if Jimmy can support himself working 60 hours a week and Bob is not supporting himself at all, why would Bob have merit for the welfare but not Jimmy? On your elaboration here, it seems like Jimmy would have no merited grounds; but at the same time we would recognize that the sheer work he is putting in might make it fair to give him it as well.
In what way do you think so?
:chin:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/955844
I don't. Your concept concerns 'what persons deserve' 'rights' or 'needs' but by justice I understand 'nonzero sum conflict resolution' (i.e. fairness) as a community policy priority / standard.
No. The latter pertains to community policy whereas the former pertains to interpersonal conduct. "Justice" is a policy priority, not a habit / rule of conduct.
I don't understand what you mean.
I see what you are saying now, but it seems merely semantical. Isn't this "interpersonal conduct" that you are referring to underpin the "community policy"? Or are they completely disparate areas of ethics?
Not necessarily.
Yes. Afaik, personal habits (ethos) are normative and institutional priorities (polis) are applications of norms to public conflicts (or issues) which are not limited to or by those norms.
So, ethics, under your view, is a personal habit? It doesn't hold absolute binding force when propositionalized? (e.g., "I should not be obese" is just true for me personally, but not for anyone in the same circumstances and of the same nature as me)
Could you give an example where the "community policy" is not underpinned by "interpersonal conduct" (so that I can understand where you are coming from)?
Sorry @Leontiskos, somehow my response didn't get recognized by this forum as an actual response to your comment (and thusly not notifying you). Here's my response: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/958145 . I must have accidentally forgot to click the reply button before typing.
I'll take that bet. I can't promise anything, though. Hello, by the way.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmm... Well, we should distinguish ethnic nationalism from civic nationalism. If that's what it boils down to, then I prefer civic nationalism myself.
However, here is the main point of disagreement between you and me on this topic: I believe in continentalism, because I think that continentalism is to the continent what nationalism is to the nation. Non-Europeans and Non-North-Americans (what you call "The West", which is now a "global thing") would do better to just embrace Europeism and Northamericanism (respectively) instead of imperialism (and, of course, Europeans should embrace Europeism instead of imperialism, and North Americans should embrace Northamericanism instead of imperialism, as well). As for Western Supremacy, I don't believe in that concept, because I don't believe in Eastern Supremacy either, nor do I believe in Northern Supremacy, nor do I believe in Southern Supremacy.
So, to summarize my point: Continentalism (not imperialism) is the highest stage of nationalism. And Worldism (not Western Supremacy) is the highest stage of Westernism (in the sense of "Occidentalism", if you will, as distinct from "Orientalism").
EDIT:
EDIT 2: On the topic of Argentine Nationalism, here is the song that I like the most:
On the topic of South American Continentalism (Southamericanism), my favorite song is the following one:
Northamericanism? What is that? Note that Mexico is part of North America, so why if logical with continentalism, then simply both South and North America? Mexico is actually very close to the US than to Europe.
And notice that many countries embrace that civic nationalism. Few truly embrace ethnic nationalism, like Israel does.
It would be something along the following lines:
Quoting ssu
Sure. And I would go even further: Central America, as well as the Caribbean, are part of the North American continent, in purely geographic terms. Central America is not a continent, nor is the Caribbean a continent. All of that is geographically part of North America, and so is Greenland. The problem begins when a particular country (i.e., the United States of America) wants to conquer another country in their own continent (i.e., Mexico, Greenland, etc.).
Quoting ssu
Of course. That's what I'm saying. There are two "Americas", in purely continental terms: North America and South America. Those are the continents. By contrast, Latin America is not a continent, it's just a group of countries in which the inhabitants speak a language derived from Medieval Latin, such as Spanish (Castellano) in the case of Argentina, Portuguese in the case of Brazil, and French in the case of the French Guiana. Suriname (formerly known as the Dutch Guiana) would not be part of Latin America, since they speak Dutch. And the French Guiana is not even an independent country, it's essentially a French colony. South America, in contrast to Latin America, is indeed a continent, not just a group of countries that share a common language. Same as Europe, which is indeed a continent, and not a group of countries that share a common language. Same as North America. After all, California was part of Mexico in the past, and Louisiana was part of France.
Quoting ssu
I don't believe in ethnic nationalism, really. But I do believe in civic nationalism.
That does connect still somehow, even if there is Brazil. Of course, these countries aren't as in such good terms with each other than are for example EU members, but still especially the contrast towards the US is there. There's a lot of feeling to be together in Latin America than just being North American.
Yet the most important question is, for what would you need Northamericanism? What is the narrative of it? Where do you use it?
I'll take the loose definition of the Nordic Countries to explain this. First of all, it isn't Skandinavia, as Finland is not part of it and because when the idea of the Nordic countries emerged, the Baltic States belonged to the Soviet Union. Yet in order to have such a group, many things have to happen.
And above all, there ought to be a genuine feeling for borders being a needless division between friends. The states have to have cordial friendly relations and respect. Above all, there ought not to be any historical grunges and feeling that the other ones behind the border are totally different, even possibly a threat.
Not only with a bully like Trump, as his disrespect even towards Canada is evident, will there emerge anything like the idea of Northamericanism. Mexico lost huge amounts of territory in the Mexican-American war and the later US actions during the Mexican Civil War and afterwards is at the root of anxiety towards the "Gringos" in Mexico. And the imperialism that the US has shown earlier in Central American and in the Caribbean is there to be remembered. Trump's unabashed imperialist views that are meant to be a distraction only poke the fears and hatred towards the US.
And in the end, when states do have a national identity, this cannot be replaced. This means that there then should be a higher level identity above this, which the countries can relate to. Just like the North European countries that all are happy to use the term "Nordic" or like three European countries can be called "Benelux"-countries.
The English calling their country the "United Kingdom" and everybody accepting to being "British" have been successful in this (except for the Irish, that is). Yet the whole idea is now forgotten so badly, that even the English start to ask just what being "British" or "English" means. Yet it can be a possibility, a higher level identity binding together people with different national identities is possible.
This is something that the EU ought to put more importance to than it does. The EU may have a flag, even a hymn, but it lacks at the present the ideological zeal and purpose. It isn't marketed to the member state citizens as it ought to be. The EU has never been marketed to the people as a savior from our bloody past seen from our history, but just as a technical bureaucratic institution that is good for commerce. Bureaucrats in Brussells won't do that. Their effect is the opposite. The EU-citizen hasn't been involved in the experiment, only the elites.
Sounds good: take your time :smile:
I agree.
I dont understand what that would mean in the context of the values currently shared in North America or Europe. It seems to me that the West has it better than the East; but theres lots of petty disputes in the West about different topics.
So you think cultures are just different, not inferior or superior?
Well yes, I might be wrong, of course, and you might be right. That goes without saying. All I'm saying is, that I, Arcane Sandwich, cannot see any meaningful difference between the concept of "Western Supremacy" and what may be called "Occidentalism", as distinct from Orientalism in Edward Said's sense of the term. Is Occidentalism a "real thing", or is it just Western Supremacy? I'm not sure. I think it is (the "same thing", that is), but I could be wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
I wouldn't say that. I don't believe in cultural relativism, or in ethical relativism. As you eloquently said yourself in the OP:
Quoting Bob Ross
I agree with the intent of what you're saying here, but I'm not sure if I would use the term "inferior culture" or the term "should not be tolerated". I get what you're saying, and I agree with the underlying message, it just seems (to my mind) like an unfortunate choice of words. What I would say instead is that there is such a thing as evil, which applies to both the Nazis as well as the supporters of sex offenses.
Perhaps "evil" isn't the best word here, but I think it's better than "inferior" or "should not be tolerated".
But it's just that: a feeling. If we give preference to Latin America over South America, then why wouldn't we take things one step further and give preference to Hispanoamérica, such that we exclude Brazil, Suriname, and the French-speaking regions? I prefer to bond over the land (i.e., the continent) than to bond over the language (i.e., Romance languages), but that's admittedly a personal choice.
Quoting ssu
"Northamericanism" is just an ugly word that I made up, in an attempt to refer to "North American Continentalism", which would be something like "The culture of the continent that runs from Alaska to the Panama Canal, including all of the Caribbean islands, such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti, among others). Think of it like a "New York style melting pot", but at the continental level instead of the national level.
Quoting ssu
I don't recognize Scandinavia as a continent, if that's what you're asking. Scandinavia is just a group of three (very different) nations: Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The problem with "scandinavian-ism" is that it often turns into Borealism, which is the Northern equivalent to "Occidentalism" and Orientalism. It is, in some sense, "North-ism". Its opposite would be "Austral-ism" (as in, the Aurora Borealis vs the Aurora Australis). "Austral-ism" would be, in some sense, "South-ism". Being an Argentine, I have some things in common with Australians instead of Mexicans, since we're from the Southern Hemisphere. For a similar reason, being Argentine I have some things in common with Mexicans instead of Australians, since we're both from the Western Hemisphere. Argentina is South-West, Australia is South-East, while Mexico, the United States and Finland are North West. Yet, Mexico and the United states are part of the North American continent, while Finland is part of the European continent. Argentina is part of the South American continent, while Australia is part of the Oceanic continent. I don't recognize Australia as a continent, I recognize it as a country within a larger continent: Oceania (therefore, I don't think that Oceania is "just a region").
Quoting ssu
Sure, I agree. To some extent, anyways.
Quoting ssu
Yeah well, tell that to the "Swedish Death Metal vs Norwegian Black Metal" people, lol. You don't have that problem because Finnish metalheads have Finntroll and Nightwish, for example.
Quoting ssu
Trump has quite a sizable group of Latin supporters, even within the United States of America, actually. Think of all of the republicans that happen to be from Spanish-speaking countries, or that have parents that came to the USA from one of the countries in question, such as the Cuban community in the state of Florida, for example. Not to mention his supporters in Puerto Rico.
Quoting ssu
Hmmm... I'm not sure if I understand this. What do you mean, when you say those words?
Quoting ssu
Well yes, no one says that continentalism is always effective, just as no one says that nationalism is always effective. If the European Union is Europe's best attempt at articulating European Continentalism, then it's not good enough, because if it was, people would have never even thought about Brexit as a concept, or even as "the right thing to do in such circumstances".
Like the way "we might pick up litter for the sake of the community"? The community is the people as a whole, not the government apparatus. In a democracy the government exists and operates at the behest of the community. It's important to distinguish the community from the government.
The natural way that an orphan is cared for is by next-of-kin, which is a communal consideration (albeit the smaller community of the extended family). But the logic of this is a logic of distributive justice, and insofar as the large community mimics this case of the extended family, it will also be a matter of distributive justice.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think you need to re-read it. He is not saying that justice is giving people goods proportionate to their merits. In fact he is explicitly addressing the latter question. So for example, look at the way he compares democracies to oligarchies to blood-aristocracies, to true aristocracies. There he is giving an example of different measures of worth, and distribution will depend on the measure used. The real meat of this comes in book two: The Politics.
Quoting Bob Ross
You are mixing two different measures of worth: labor vs. need. I surmised that the UBI is based on need, and if it is based on need then the one in need is the one who receives the payment (but of course this does not occur with the UBI). You want to switch out need in favor of recompense, which actually looks like commutative justice, not distributive justice.
If the citizens of the US have this national identity of being "American", it's hard to tell that actually now you are going to be Northamerican and so put that antiquated Stars and stripes flag away as it's only a local flag and officially use another new flag. And refer to yourself from now onward as Northamericans when foreigners ask who you are.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
First of all, many Americans think about secession of their state, at least as a theoretical option. The Brits here can tell just how and why UK did Brexit happen, there's a whole thread about it. However do notice that actually Brexit showed other member states just how awful and economically disastrous such a stupid move would be. How badly it went and what UK citizens now think about Brexit is very telling and has actually been noticed by many people, who do have had their criticism against the EU in their own countries.
It's usually the American commentators who declare the imminent demise of the EU integration project, something that they have done now for decades.
Yet what is also telling is that those who really are keeping up the dream of the EU are Ukrainians and Georgians, who have seen how other neighboring countries have become stable and prospered inside the European Union. It's in these countries who want to avoid to be under the control of the Russian Empire that cherish the thought of European integration.
Insofar as "personal habits" in the context of my previous post specifically means virtues, then I think so.
Two policies come to mind: retributive justice (i.e. proportional punishment) & distributive justice (i.e. social welfare). Neither policy is based on how individuals ought to treat each other or (non-reciprocally) conduct themselves.
Again, I refer you to this old post (esp. 2nd para.)...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/857773
I need to correct this thing that I said. Scandinavia also includes Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. Why didn't you point out this mistake that I made, @ssu?
Quoting ssu
We need to agree on some kind of word here, to refer to the citizens of the US. I won't use "gringos" because that's insulting to them, and it's disrespectful. I won't use the word "yankees" because that's completely inaccurate, because the Yankees were the Northern people that fought in the civil war against their South. So, in that sense, a lot people from their South don't see themselves as yankees, they don't claim that cultural heritage, if you will. Think of them like "confederates but in the year 2025", if that makes any sense to you. So, the point is, I don't call them "yankees", though that word is about as common as "gringo". They prefer to call themselves "Americans". Now, I'm not going to force them to stop using that word (nor would I want to), and I'm not going to force them to use the word "North Americans" instead (nor would I want to). All I'm saying is that if they call themselves "Americans", then by the same lights (by parity of reason, that is) I can call myself an "American" in the same sense. Why? Because we're both Americans, just look at the words: North American, South American. We're both Americans. The only difference is that you're from the North and I'm from the South, that's it. You speak English, I speak Spanish. You learned Spanish at school, I learned English at school. I mean, come on, man, this isn't rocket science, it's just basic words. What they actually need, from a purely technical standpoint, is a word that refers uniquely to them, the citizens of the US. Some of them call themselves "USians", pronounced "ooh-sians" (I've seen it, actually. In several places, including this very Forum). That word sounds a bit odd to my ear, so it's understandable that they, given the choice, would want to call themselves "Americans" instead. All I'm saying is, don't deny me that right, because since I'm a South American, I have the same right as a North American to call myself an American simpliciter. But I just say that I'm from Argentina instead, just to avoid unnecessary rambling.
Quoting ssu
Why do you, a Finn, call them "Americans"? Would you call me an "American" as well? You better, or I'll book a flight to Suomi tomorrow and I'll challenge you to tell me that you know more heavy metal bands than I do (please don't ban me from the Forum for that joke, I have enough problems with Swedes as it is, I don't need the Finns against me on this point as well).
Quoting ssu
Is that a fact or an accusation, Sir?
Quoting ssu
Hmmm... Do I agree with this? I'm not so sure. Can you just explain this last part to me, please? And explain it to me like I'm really stupid.
I am going to read the Politics and then get back to you: I don't believe I've read that, or if I have then I don't remember it, and so that's probably the issue here.
Because Faroa Islands aren't a sovereign state, they are part of Denmark. Even if they have autonomy, just like Greenland or Åland Islands have autonomy from Finland.
Of course there more regions to the Nordic countries too, so ask yourself, do you know all the flags and what regions they represent here?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Actually it's quite telling of the attitude of people of the US to refer to themselves to be Americans, even if it logically refers to all people in the Continent and not just themselves. It would be like if people of the member states of the EU would refer themselves being the Europeans. What role then for the Swiss or for the Norwegians etc?
Hence when Trump is talking about Canada being part of the US, he is talking about annexation, not about a merger of states, where Canada's status would be diminished to be a state like Rhode Island with a governor.
Top row: Denmark, no idea, Norway.
Middle row: Sweden, Iceland, Suomi.
Bottom row: Faroe Islands, no idea, no idea.
I looked up the three that I didn't know: Greenland, Åland, and Sámi flag. The last one was the least familiar to me.
So you believe in the Nordic countries as something higher or greater than Suomi, and of Scandinavia? I'm not sure that I understand the point that you seem to be making here.
Are the Nordic countries part of Europe? Should they "do their own thing", in a sense comparable to Brexit?
And what's the best metal band from the Nordic countries, in your opinion? Do you listen to metal? If not, what's the best music band from the Nordic countries?
Not higher, but something that Finns can relate to with other Northern European countries. Hence Swedes, Norwegians and Finns etc. can refer happily to being part of the Nordic countries. Many times it's very beneficial to have close ties with states and it's something that many countries are very much seeking to build. Hence in Europe we talk about the Benelux-countries, the Visegrad-countries, the Baltic States, the Nordic countries and so on. Trading blocs and political blocs can be very useful when they function.
For Finland it was actually extremely crucial that Sweden joined NATO at the same time (even if thanks to Turkey it was a long process for the country).
And it's something that many times is totally lacking from the historical narratives of "Great Power competition" where the strong defeat and conquer the weak and where Great Empires emerge and collapse. The focus is on conflict, not peace and stability. The last war between the Nordic / Skandinavian countries was fought between Norway and Sweden, which is also the last war that Sweden has fought, happened in 1814 between Sweden and Norway. Hence that is 211 years of peace between the countries, which earlier had many wars starting from the Middle Ages with basically the bellicose Sweden being in constant war all the time.
I've never heard of the first two, let me look them up at Google in just one second...
I see... and how about the other one?
Hmmm...
Quoting ssu
Ah, so you believe in blocs, is that it? Like the BRICS, for example. That sort of political organization is what you believe in? That's what's best for the Nordic countries?
Quoting ssu
Hmmm...
Quoting ssu
Right, because the Suomi language is not a Germanic language. The Suomi people were not Vikings. Right? The Finns and Estonians have more in common, from a linguistic standpoint?
So, on the topic of music, what do you like? What is the best music band from Suomi?
There are different kinds of political organizations. Some are just for talk, but some have a lot more beneficial effects than just leaders meeting each other. Cooperation is beneficial. If two countries don't have relations, there will be a lot of mistrust.
Latin America is a good example of this. In the 19th Century there were a lot of very bloody wars between the countries (like the war of the Confederation) and still you have borders wars like between Peru and Ecuador or Venezuela threatening annexation of large parts of Guyana. This means that the relations, even if better than earlier, are still a bit tense. But they could be better.
Well, but it's an odd thing, you see. The French Guiana, for example, is not an independent country. It's literally a French colony, still to this day. They never declared independence. So it's technically part of the European Union. Yet it is located in the continent of South America.
So, what is my take on that? Well, I honestly don't know much about the French Guiana to begin with. I just know that it's technically European Union presence on South American soil. And in that sense, the French Guiana is just one example among others.
I'm not sure that the concept of blocs are the solution to the underlying problems here, at least not all of them. For example, would it make sense for Argentina and Finland to form a bloc, with a few other countries? What would be the purpose of that? A more efficient trade? I'd say that we don't need a bloc for that.
If there is a reason for it, if the cooperation would be mutually good for all countries involved, why not? There has to be a reason. Otherwise it's just empty talk, handshakes and the usual photo opportunities.
And if the reason is just to talk about philosophy between a Finn and an Argentine on an Internet forum? Is that sort of cooperation mutually beneficial for all countries involved? If you say "no", then why are we talking here, you and me? If you say "yes", then here is my next question: would it be just empty talk, handshakes and the usual photo opportunities? In other words, is this conversation between you and me, just empty talk? If you say "yes", then my next question is: why are we talking then, you and me? If you say "no", then my other question is: if it's not just empty talk, what is it about this conversation that makes it substantive in any way? I mean, I tried to talk to you about the topic of music, but it's not a subject that you're interested in, apparently. Do you like ABBA, for exampe? Or Roxette? Is that it?
Nation states and the people acting as their representatives, it's a bit different. They talk as representatives and usually have a political domestic agenda, which foreign policy should implement and help.
For nations to engage each other there is this need of recipocity and something for the leadership to show for. Usually the leadership of a country has a mandate to do something, usually to improve the situation of it's people.
Hence if it's Javier Milei meeting our President Alexander Stubb, the obvious question is how trade between the two countries can be increased or what kind of investments could Finland do in Argentina. This is what both Milei and Stubb would want and it would be mutually beneficial for the two countries. The rather small trade between the countries is telling: Finland exported about 400 million euros worth of industrial equipment to Argentina while Argentina exported a meager 10 million euros worth to Finland, mainly wines. Only ten or so Finnish companies operate in Argentina and they employ only 400 people. In Uruguay Finnish investments are far larger with forty companies operating and the exports being over twice as to Argentina, so there obviously is much room for improvement as Argentina is a larger country than Uruguay.
Argentinian wines are good and Argentinian steaks are World renown. Naturally Finland wants to sustain some level of production in agriculture as it's sea lanes could be cut off (and Finland couldn't sustain itself by land connection by Sweden), yet I would think there would be a market for more Argentinian beef and wine. Also as Finland wants to diversify it's energy exports, why not buy LNG from Argentina?
As both Presidents are likely on a tight schedule and likely will have only some brief time to engage with each other, the discussion on commerce and political relations would be important. Yes, they could have a wonderful talk about philosophy, but would that be the most useful way for heads of the political structures to spend their time?
And why would this be important for Argentina? Because exports for Argentina are only 12,93% compared to the GDP, while Finland it is 40,96%. On the trade openess index Finland is on place 106th while Argentina is 192nd out of 196. Here you can see the real effects of Peronism as international trade simply isn't an important part of Argentinian economy. For Peronism "economic independence" has been one of the cornerstones of the political ideology. In fact, as Peronism is actually one type of populism, you can see what the effects on the long run have been in Argentina. At the start of the 20th Century, Argentina was far more wealthier than Finland with far higher GDP / per capita. Now the
Commerce has been the way that rich countries have become rich. For smaller countries (and larger ones, like Germany) international trade has been very important. Yet there's a false narrative that they are rich because they have exploited other countries. Being colonial powers has usually made only a few very rich and in the end have been a more of a problem. Portugal as one of the first European colonial powers and the last one just shows how detrimental it has been and how poor the country was with trying to fight colonial wars in Africa in the 1970's.
Then let's do it. Is there a philosophical reason that you have for avoiding music as a topic of conversation? Or is it that don't find music to be a particularly interesting thing to talk about, from a philosophical standpoint?
Quoting ssu
Well, what am I then, and what are you? Notice that I'm not asking who am I, or who are you. I'm asking what are we. Are we not members of our respective nations? Am I not an Argentine? Are you not a Finn? This talk between you and me is a talk between two different nations in that sense. Furthermore, no one is representing me in this conversation, and no one is representing you.
Quoting ssu
But no nation is identical to its leadership. So, what is the need of reciprocity here, between you and me? Do you want to talk about Argentine wines? Finnish investments? Why would we do that? We have representatives for that, as you so eloquently pointed out. Let them talk about the wines and the investments. We can talk about that as well, if you like, it's just that I don't find it to be a particularly interesting thing to talk about. I'd rather talk about music, for example.
Quoting ssu
Well, during the 19th Century, Argentina declared its independence from the Spanish Empire, fought a War of Independence, followed by a Civil War, and later by an extermination campaign in the Pampas and the Patagonia. That was followed by five military dictatorships during the 20th Century, including a War with Britain in Malvinas. A very different history than the one that characterized Finland during the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps that's why the communication between you and me is so incredibly difficult, even though it might look perfectly normal to other people.
Nope. I just try to stick to the actual topic of the thread.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
In that sense, but then again this is also talk between two people who are interested in philosophy.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Again, it's about the topic of the thread, that starts with the opening paragraph of @Bob Ross, which is on intent quite provocative. Imperialism isn't reciprocity, it doesn't start from mutual benefits as peaceful engagement does. Looking at World history from the viewpoint of Great Power competition hides or forgets a lot what happens in peacetime.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Not actually so different, if you take the 19th and 20th centuries. Both have had civil wars. Both have gotten independence from an Great Power. Both have fought the British (Finland as a Grand Dutchy of Russia then, but still). Where the difference is from being on different continents: Finland never has had a military junta and has had no extermination campaigns. Finland has stayed as a democracy and has prospered rather well, still being poorer than Sweden or Denmark, but still.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Is it?
Ah, but you are too Lawful, my dear. You lack a bit of the Chaotic joyfulness that I have : )
Besides, music has much to do with the issues that the OP raises. How could it not? Think of military marches, for example, or prison songs, for that matter. Songs to inspire moral, songs to record an event. I think you underestimate the role that music has played throughout history. There is no reason to think that this is any different in our times, unless you think that History ended some years ago, and this is "just politics" now.
Quoting ssu
Well, yes. We are also two Animals (Primates, specifically) engaged in conversation. We also happen to be two physical bodies, composed of some of the elements of the Periodic Table (most notably, carbon). And we also happen to be two physical entities that emerge from subatomic particles. In that sense, we have something in common. Something that runs deeper than nationality. Something that runs deeper than biology. Something that runs deeper than chemistry. See what I mean?
Quoting ssu
Or just look at this brief exchange, between you and me.
Quoting ssu
Plus we have very different native languages. I speak Castilian ("Spanish"), you speak Suomi ("Finnish"). And yet we are using English to communicate. In that sense, English is our Common language. It is "The Language of this Empire", if you will, except that there's no actual empire to back it up. Hence, it's just one of the Common World Languages by now, 2025.
What is there to talk about, then, if not music? Perhaps film? Painting? Poetry?
Quoting ssu
It is, yes. You're extremely Lawful, On Topic. I'm far more Chaotic in that sense.
Chaotic Latin joyfulness??? Ah, the wonderful national stereotypes.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Well, this hasn't gone unnoticed when creating nation states and national identities. We indeed have national anthems and patriotic songs that we listen on certain events. The collective experience is important.
What would be more fitting than this one for you, my friend. Notice how the crowd sings along:
Well, I'm a 'cosmopolitan alter-globalist'...
Like "whiteness", "the west" is a myth, and, as a scientifically and historically literate (postcolonial) freethinker, I'm engaged in praxes of support for both the abductive disenchanting of nature and dialectical demythifying of political economies.
How can it be a national stereotype, if Latin is not a nation? The nation is Argentina in this case, Latin is simply a language that no nation speaks. It's not even spoken in Europe anymore. There is nothing Latin about me, or about the language that I speak, just as there is nothing acorn-like about the tree that once used to be nothing but an acorn : )
Quoting ssu
Quite a boring song, if I'm being honest. I prefer this other one:
Firstly, my OP is not arguing for white supremacy; and I don't know why you went there.
How is the west a myth? Historically, the democratic values we all tend to love originated out of the west and the east has been playing catch-up.
And it should be noted that many that speak of things like "Western supremacy" are happy to take Japan to be part of that West, unlike their contemporaries of the 19th and early 20th Century. For them, modernization and westernization are synonyms and democratic values inherently Western and not anything else. How European or Western Japanese actually think of themselves being is another issue, as they seldom are asked about it.
What do you think of that, @ssu? Agree? Disagree? Sort of agree, sort of disagree?
Quoting ssu
Are they? What's your take on that?
Quoting ssu
How do you know that they're seldom asked about it? Do you know any of them? There's a lot of foreigners living in Japan as of 2025.
EDIT: BTW @ssu is "Rule, Britannia!" the best you got, as far as music goes? I feel like you're not putting much of an effort in the music department. Here, let me help you out. I see your "Rule, Britannia!" and I raise you "Mano Brava":
The idea that western values are superior to eastern values in no way implies nor entails that the white "race" is superior to any other "race".
There's truth to that. At the most simple level, we just love to look at our own navel and think about us. That modern life in other continents is quite the same, people have quite similar ideas what is right or wrong is a fact. Why then the hubris? Something that is now universal, is universal, even if it first happened in Europe. If Europe adapted inventions from China or India, we don't call the "Asianization" of Europe.
Samir Amin, who btw as a Marxist supported the Khmer Rouge and was their apologist, goes on to say that it isn't about "catching up", but that eurocentrism leads to polarization of the World. I'm not so sure about that.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
No. Modernization can happen in many ways.
In history it has been that Europe hasn't been on the cutting edge.Europe of the Dark Ages is an example of this as then the teachings of Antiquity were held by the Muslim east. The Asian military superiority was evident when the Mongol Horde came into Europe and defeated larger European armies. Lucky for Europe that they didn't do more than a "recon attack". It was only Napoleon that woke up the Ottomans, before they were the ones trying to take Vienna and being the imperialists taking territory. Only after the Renaissance and especially the Age of Enlightenment and industrialization it turned to being "From the West to the rest" as @Bob Ross perhaps would say.
Many times it's not the success of someone, but the failures of others.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
We were talking about patriotic music. Or how nation states use music for their own purposes. And since you where an Argentinian, why not then British patriotic music? I guess you have heard quite much the Himno Nacional Argentino already.
Explain why you're not so sure about that, please.
Quoting ssu
Wise words, I suppose.
Quoting ssu
You kinda answered your own question there.
Quoting ssu
Not really.
Again, @ssu, I see what you're trying to do here, with your selection of music. You might think that your move with "Rule, Britannia!" is some sort of marvelous, genius display of playful irony, in an attempt to get me, an Argentine, riled up. What do you want me to say? It's rather cringe on your part. Like, you're not a Brit, you're a Finn. To my mind, it's like you're not putting in much of an effort to get me riled up, honestly. It just comes off as weird on your part. Like, if we're talking about assertiveness and/or playful aggression, you're just doing the bare minimum here. I was taught otherwise. I was taught that effort pays off. I'm sure there's an equivalent notion in Suomi. There's gotta be. Anyways, here's another patriotic song:
Consider Kipling's 1899 imperialist paean ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
and Mark Twain's 1901 response ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Person_Sitting_in_Darkness
Quoting ssu
:up:
Anyone could justify whatever goals they have with this approach.
I think some fundamental question that must be addressed are: Who is entitled to decide which countries are inferior and which are not? Who is to determine what values and political systems are supposedly superior to others?
Take a hypothetical scenario, where we lived in a world where the majority of states ran antithetical to the human good-policies and practices, inter alia, slavery, cruel punishments and various other violations of human rights. Lets say some of these states, which are functioning in a relatively stable manner, perceived their own governance as superior to that of others. Are they therefore also justified to invade and impose their form of governance on others, simply because they see it as better?
I feel like the logical crux of your argument here is that the sole justification for imperialism you name seems to be (correct me if I am wrong) the belief in one's own superiority to others, in terms of values, morales and the manner in which one governs their country. However, this belief in superiority alone alone does not provide sufficient legitimacy for any such endeavors, irrespective of their nature.
Furthermore, even if one were to attempt to force a certain form of governance on another country: For something like democracy to work and be properly maintained, it requires the active support and engagement in it and subsequently the will to sustain it. The people would have to yearn for it already, be willing and open to the possible changes that come along with it.
This, however, does not even address the (often complex) cultural dimension/side, nor the potential discord between the implementation of an external (political) system or issues with the invader's nation's cultural norms introduction to another country.
An incisive précis on literature in Pax Americana ...
https://lithub.com/viet-thanh-nguyen-most-american-literature-is-the-literature-of-empire/
addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/961000
There is an impressive lack of self-awareness in that article given the way in which Americans are extremely prone to simply painting their own domestic politics onto other parts of the world, or that he cites as exemplary "anti-imperialist work" narratives that do exactly this.
When you say "lack of self-awareness", are you referring to the article's author, American readers? American writers? or ???
Thank you, I will take a look.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Never has this been so apparent as today.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
"Anti-imperialist work" usually starts with the juxtaposition of the imperialist (Here, the US) and it's victim. The victim has little if any agency as the focus is on the actions of the imperialist. The focus of the Americans is thus solely on the Americans and their decisions and actions.
This creates a situation is where even in historical research a lot is not looked at.
I stumbled on a good example of this when Stephen Kotkin, a historian I enjoy listening, suddenly gave a huge praise to a Finnish historian Pekka Hämäläinen calling it one of the most important historical studies done at present as the Fin had wrote about Native Americans. Hämäläinen's viewpoint wasn't to list the atrocities that the European settlers did and how the US treated Native Americans, but focused on the tribes as independent actors, who had to adopt with lightning pace to new technologies and to a new situation basically by reinventing themselves. In his books The Comanche Empire and Lakota America, Hämäläinen treats native civilizations as polities making war and alliances.
Perhaps the fault is the idea that prevails so clearly in the works of Noam Chomsky. His first political book The Responsibility of Intellectuals tells in it's name what Chomsky views his role. Chomsky has stated clearly in interviews that he doesn't criticize other nations because it's not his job. He only criticizes the US, because he is an American. That if one criticizes that actions of let's say Turkey, then it is fitting for a Turkish dissident.
First of all, self criticism is good. Yet if one takes on this kind of role that Chomsky takes, one does get quite a biased US focused narrative of events where everything evolves around the US (and Washington and the Military-Industrial Complex and "the Blob").
This actually has bad consequences. You can see it now at the present how many Americans have a totally different understanding of events in Europe as Europeans have. And as now the Trump administration is truly going after what could be called classic imperialism and a trade war, the alliances the US has are really transforming.