The Political Divide is a Moral Divide
I revisited Kohlberg's stages of moral development recently. I think leftists are in the preconventional stage of morality, and MAGA are in the conventional stage.
Pre-conventional morality is only concerned with power. People in this stage don't have genuine moral opinions, but only act off of reward and punishment. So, they will do whatever authority tells them to do, no matter how transparently stupid it is. The left must clearly be in this category, because they talk about equality, and then discriminate against white men. They talk about saving the environment, and then burn electric cars. They talk about "justice" and then burn cities and punish good Samaritans. They are for feminism, but refuse to define what a woman is. So, the left has no genuine moral beliefs; all their beliefs are only verbally espoused in order to try to win the approval of other leftists.
I think MAGA is in the conventional stage of morality, which is concerned with law and order. I think "law" could be thought of as "consistent authority. It seems to me that MAGA are still waiting for other people (like Trump) to tell them what to do or to fix things, but at least they can see the inconsistency of the left and reject it.
I heard about a study not long ago ( by Jonathan Haidt) which showed that conservatives have a broader set of values. It also showed that conservatives can model what liberals think, but liberals have no idea what conservatives think and they think that conservatives are just evil. This study would seem to be consistent with the idea I just described that leftists have a lower level of moral development than conservatives. A understanding B and B not understanding A would seem to indicate that A is more developed.
According to Kohlberg, "post-conventional morality" is concerned with personal values. Only a minority of people ever reach this level. These are the only people whose morality is independent of authority, so they are the only people who are capable of taking independent moral action. It seems clear to me that the USA is screwed up in a lot of ways, so if a person hasn't taken unilateral action to improve his life, such as by buying bitcoin or precious metals, using CrowdHealth as an alternative to health insurance, homeschooling their kids, homesteading, starting their own business, expatriating for a better life, or some other such thing, then it is very unlikely that this person has reached the point where they have their own values and can act independently of authority figures. I am not trying to argue that a person must do one or all of the things in this list to be a good person, but that if a person has not taken unilateral action such as this, then one has not yet demonstrated independent moral agency.
Kohlberg received criticism because he found that most women don't progress beyond level 3 (of the 6 sub categories), which is "good boy/good girl" morality, where they are just trying to please people, whereas most men reach level 4 (law and order). I think this makes sense from a biological perspective, because traditionally, women were only responsible for their own families, but the broader society was organized by men. Subjective positive feelings for other people can be sufficient for small scale social organization, but they cannot be used to treat people justly that you do not personally know. Since men had to organize for war/hunting/executing justice, it was necessary that they developed a more impersonal morality, hence most men reaching a law & order level of morality. This gender divide is also reflected in voting patterns.
I think the current political divide in the USA is really a divide in moral development. I don't think it was always this way though, or at least not to this degree. If two people are able to calmly and peacefully make arguments in favor of differing points of view (I understand that this used to happen in US politics), then I'd be inclined to think the difference is likely to come from different experience or intellectual development. But when one side has arguments and the other only has epithets, and then turns immediately to violence when they lose, this is a difference in moral development.
Pre-conventional morality is only concerned with power. People in this stage don't have genuine moral opinions, but only act off of reward and punishment. So, they will do whatever authority tells them to do, no matter how transparently stupid it is. The left must clearly be in this category, because they talk about equality, and then discriminate against white men. They talk about saving the environment, and then burn electric cars. They talk about "justice" and then burn cities and punish good Samaritans. They are for feminism, but refuse to define what a woman is. So, the left has no genuine moral beliefs; all their beliefs are only verbally espoused in order to try to win the approval of other leftists.
I think MAGA is in the conventional stage of morality, which is concerned with law and order. I think "law" could be thought of as "consistent authority. It seems to me that MAGA are still waiting for other people (like Trump) to tell them what to do or to fix things, but at least they can see the inconsistency of the left and reject it.
I heard about a study not long ago ( by Jonathan Haidt) which showed that conservatives have a broader set of values. It also showed that conservatives can model what liberals think, but liberals have no idea what conservatives think and they think that conservatives are just evil. This study would seem to be consistent with the idea I just described that leftists have a lower level of moral development than conservatives. A understanding B and B not understanding A would seem to indicate that A is more developed.
According to Kohlberg, "post-conventional morality" is concerned with personal values. Only a minority of people ever reach this level. These are the only people whose morality is independent of authority, so they are the only people who are capable of taking independent moral action. It seems clear to me that the USA is screwed up in a lot of ways, so if a person hasn't taken unilateral action to improve his life, such as by buying bitcoin or precious metals, using CrowdHealth as an alternative to health insurance, homeschooling their kids, homesteading, starting their own business, expatriating for a better life, or some other such thing, then it is very unlikely that this person has reached the point where they have their own values and can act independently of authority figures. I am not trying to argue that a person must do one or all of the things in this list to be a good person, but that if a person has not taken unilateral action such as this, then one has not yet demonstrated independent moral agency.
Kohlberg received criticism because he found that most women don't progress beyond level 3 (of the 6 sub categories), which is "good boy/good girl" morality, where they are just trying to please people, whereas most men reach level 4 (law and order). I think this makes sense from a biological perspective, because traditionally, women were only responsible for their own families, but the broader society was organized by men. Subjective positive feelings for other people can be sufficient for small scale social organization, but they cannot be used to treat people justly that you do not personally know. Since men had to organize for war/hunting/executing justice, it was necessary that they developed a more impersonal morality, hence most men reaching a law & order level of morality. This gender divide is also reflected in voting patterns.
I think the current political divide in the USA is really a divide in moral development. I don't think it was always this way though, or at least not to this degree. If two people are able to calmly and peacefully make arguments in favor of differing points of view (I understand that this used to happen in US politics), then I'd be inclined to think the difference is likely to come from different experience or intellectual development. But when one side has arguments and the other only has epithets, and then turns immediately to violence when they lose, this is a difference in moral development.
Comments (219)
I think the polarization of groups is based upon moralizing, meaning it is when one group characterizes the other as immoral simply because they have a different worldview is what leads to the loss of middle ground.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Another possibility is that you didn't actually read A Righteous Mind.Quoting Brendan Golledge
The first part felt trollish ("the left is morally undeveloped" argument). This part devolved into something worse, not only because I do think it's probably a sincere effort at thought, but it also has that misogyny feel, where men are natural leaders and women followers. It also has the feel of where you spent about 10 mintues thinking about what cavemen must've been like and then arrived at how that must've gotten caught up in the DNA and it's the way of the world now.
One thing consistent across morals and politics is inconsistency. People may profess a moral value and then act against it. Why? Because behavior is not guided by simple rules. Rather, our algorithms guiding our behavior are complicated. That said, we tend to behave in somewhat consistent ways.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
And the left can see the inconsistency of the right and reject it.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Kohlberg assigns pre-conventional morality to infancy and pre-school. Can we say that adolescents and adults operate at this level? I don't think so. Some people claim that they performed acts deemed to be immoral because they were "only following orders". It's a cop-out under the duress of an indictment. The indicted made a series of moral decisions which placed them in the position of being ordered to perform immoral acts.
Morality has to account for the fact of power at all stages and from all POVs. Conservatives who say "I voted for Trump but I didn't vote for this!" are rethinking the implications of Trump's power. The left has also had to account for the fact of power. Having the power to allow public drug use (thinking here of highly addictive drugs like narcotics, meth, cocaine, fentanyl) has brought on intolerable behavioral problems, high levels of homelessness, and social dysfunction, which have proved intractable.
Another feature across politics and morals is short-sightedness. It's sometimes unavoidable, and sometimes it's a choice. Plastic was a wonderful thing when it was first introduced widely to consumers some 75 +/- years ago. We didn't foresee the trillions of plastic containers which we are stuck with now. On the other hand, someone with a memory voting for Trump might have foreseen that he would, if possible, enact extreme policies. He had described them clearly enough.
As an exemplar of sophisticated, mature moral judgement in a woman, I suggest you look at Dorothy Day, an anarchist / socialist who became a Catholic and spent a lifetime working for economic and political justice. She died 45 years ago and is now being considered for sainthood. Her own view on the matter was "Don't call me a saint: I don't want to be dismissed that easily!"
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Im just trying to wrap my head around the image of Brendan sitting in the middle of a group of MAGA supporters and saying to himself Gee, these people are so much more morally developed than leftists!.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Hey Brendan, just curious. Would you extend this moral
superiority to Trump or just to his MAGA followers?
Not hard to imagine. You just have to realise you can disagree with the morals, and still notice that they are more developed (or, better orchestrated/consistent). I think that's patently true (though, most reasons why that's the case are negative in my view lol).
You don't know my mind
When you see me laughing,
I'm laughing just to keep from crying
I just let myself cry now.
ls it not sometimes be the case that the simplistic or primitive positions are easier to articulate and pull off?
When it comes to liberals, I tend to think they come in a continuum - some would belong to what MAGA people might call the "crazy Woke" brigade and others closer to centrist positions. I'm not much interested in politics, but it seems to me that the political debate these days focuses on the crazies on both sides, without recognising that most people are closer to the centre. Perhaps I'm wrong about this.
Begs the quesion too about just what morally developed looks like? Is moral development a matter of actual progress or simply of changing community values? If we believe in moral progress then are we not de facto moral realists?
I was under this impression until some recent events had an overwhelming party-political bent to them (Karmelo Anthony, Luigi Mangione, Elon being drawn in to Government etc...) where the position is patently insane (Musk is a Nazi, Karmelo Anthony is a hero, Luigi Mangione is a hero) but correct, as far as the acceptable opinions for that group go. I could also be wrong, though, so your point rings very loud in my ears. The media etc.. heightens that impression, even if it's roughly speaking, correct.
Quoting Tom Storm
Neither. For me, for that concept to hold much of anything, we're looking for coherence. IFF you believed your gay child was headed directly for Hell, your actions would be clear, concise and obviously toward the end of keeping them out of Hell. Well-developed. Doesn't mean good :P
This is something that hte theory they're using has to answer for. Is it an objective moral, and can it be articulated? From a religious point of view, they're very-well sorted in that sense.
Quoting BC
Apparently, somebody called "Rest" tried to test Kohlberg's theory and found that 1 out of 14 people actually regress through Kohlberg's stages. As far as I'm concerned, 13/14 is pretty good for psychology.
Quoting BC
I gave examples of inconsistency on the left, and you did not attempt to refute it. And you gave no examples of inconsistency on the right.
I don't even see how most of the rest of your post is relevant. I can't remember the Republicans and Democrats ever arguing about plastic, for instance.
Quoting BC
It's nice if there are smart women out there, but I was talking about statistical trends rather than individual people.
Quoting Joshs
IMO, the Democrat politicians are overtly my enemies, and the Republican politicians are my enemies who pretend to be my friends. I haven't voted since 2012 because I saw that my local caucus was rigged. I think politics is about as real as pro-wrestling. Although, I was astonished that Trump mentioned a bunch of things that I actually wanted during his 2nd term, because I had never felt represented by an elected politician before. However, I don't even know if he's actually accomplished even 10% of what I'd like him to accomplish yet, so it might still be all for show. Also, I think some of the ways he's going about things (even if I agree that they address real problems) are not the best way of doing it. I was just so surprised in the last couple months that a politician actually did something that I half-agreed with, since it happens so rarely. I thought most of what he did in his first term was nonsense and a distraction.
Quoting Tom Storm
I used Kohlberg's definition of moral development in this case. Apparently, it is pretty good. According to Kohlberg, moral development relates more to how you process moral questions, rather than necessarily getting any particular answer.
Quoting tim wood
I feel like I'm probably wasting my time. It is a common trope of liberals to pretend like they were born yesterday in order to make their opponent explain everything that has ever existed before they will concede a point. But I will answer your questions anyway.
1. https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/cisgender-straight-white-males-need-not-apply.html
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/major-us-companies-gave-94-of-new-jobs-to-people-of-color-in-2021-report-says-diversity-hiring-employees-apple-nike-microsoft-wells-fargo
^It came straight from the horse's mouth that they are discriminating against white people.
DEI is logically equivalent to discrimination. Suppose the options are A, B, or C exclusively.
If you choose A OR B
by Demorgan's theorem, that's the same as NOT (NOT A AND NOT B)
By exclusion, NOT A AND NOT B means C, if there are only 3 options
Substitute C for (NOT A and NOT B) above and you get
A OR B <--> NOT C
if, for instance, A means women and B means people of color, then C is white men. Trying on purpose to hire A OR B is the same as trying to not hire C.
So, every company that ever had a DEI page was advertising that they hate white men.
2. Electric cars are supposed to be good for the environment. Before Elon made them, liberals liked electric cars. I think even a majority of people buying from Tesla were liberals before Elon bought Twitter and made all the liberals mad. Also, apparently burning batteries releases a lot of toxic fumes.
3. There were BLM riots in Minneapolis, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles, among other cities. They are still burning Tesla cars, so far as I know. "Burn down a city" I guess is an exaggeration, but they burned a lot of stuff.
The most famous Good Samaritan I think is Daniel Penny. At least, all the witnesses seemed to agree that he was a hero.
4. Did you never hear of the documentary "What is a Woman?" There is a famous case during a confirmation hearing where Judge Jackson was asked, "What is a woman?" and responded, "I can't... Not in this context. I'm not a biologist." I found a half dozen other situations like this after a quick google search, but if you cared, you could also google it or use ChatGPT or something.
Quoting tim wood
I was arguing that law-based morality really still means argument based on authority, except with the caveat that it should be consistent. Law isn't really law if it isn't consistent, after all, and it can't exist without some authority decreeing it.
Thank you, Amadeus, for giving reasonable replies.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Quoting Brendan Golledge
comes across as emotional, dismissive and unhelpful to a conversation. You should assume most people will have a hard time with these topics and not lose patience. Don't fall into the NOS4A2 hole of being lumpen about conversations you apparently are deeply invested in :) If you don't want to reply, don't. But its not good to say "I don't want to reply, but I will" basically. Feels like you've already made up your mind.
OK, so "law and order" and the January 6th attack on the capitol by right wingers.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Smart women have always been a trend, just like smart men.
In their view, however misguided, they were upholding Law by pushing back against an illegally-won election (I know, I know. Roll your eyes all you want. I did. But this is consistent, at least).
It's the response, post-Jan 6 than gives me quite a bit of inconsistency to go on with.
Quoting BC
Could you point to this trend? Noting that I am well aware that that 'smart women" have existed as long as humans have. It seems quite clear to me that what Brendan is getting at is above this level of (fair) glibness.
This is an example of right wingers behaving in a disorderly way. I do not think I could justify that the right has done everything correctly.
One thing I could point out though is that the quantity of deaths, injuries, and property damage done by the BLM riots dwarfs what was done on Jan 6th. Also, as a counter-example, there was a pro 2nd amendment rally in Virginia a few years ago where 22k armed protestors showed up, and not a single shot was fired. This demonstrates that the right has a greater capacity for violence than the left, but acts less violently.
The argument I am making here is that women as a group don't progress as high up Kohlberg's stages of moral development as men. I have not seen any counter points (individual persons don't really demonstrate anything).
This seems a bit of "whataboutism". I think BC has correctly identified a situation where, for all other viewers, the right-wing action was hypocritical. No?
Quoting Brendan Golledge
One counterpoint would be that, historically, this hasn't been possible. Currently, the trend is toward more educated/intelligent woman taking up more and more space in our 'important' fields like STEM and politics. Still a disparity? Yep. There would be, on either reading - so it's hard to understand why you think your version is the correct reading?
According to Jonathan Haidt, Liberals care about harm and fairness (individualizing values), whereas conservatives care more about loyalty, authority, and sanctity (binding values).
According to Kohlberg, Stage 3 (out of 6) is about Interpersonal Accord and Conformity. Stage 4 is about authority and maintaining social order.
I think liberal values of harm and fairness falling in stage 3, and the conservative values falling in stage 4 is a largely consistent synthesis of the two. Women being associated both with stage 3 and with liberal political leaning is also consistent.
However, Kohlberg classified both these stages as conventional morality, whereas I said that the left is in pre conventional morality. This seems like a bit of a misclassification on my part. However, I don't think that the people who behave violently or rudely are acting out interpersonal accord. So, whereas it would not be accurate in this model to say that all liberals fall in pre conventional morality, I think it would be safe to say that the most egregious behavior on the left is in pre conventional morality.
I said that both care about authority and power, but Kohlberg doesn't mention authority as a value until level 4. However, he does mention reward and punishment in levels 1 and 2. So, who is giving rewards and punishments except for authority? I think the lower levels of development respect the power that authority has, but level 4 starts to respect authority for its own sake, even if there is no immediate threat of punishment.
Someone asked whether I think adults act like infants. I think the adults who need safe spaces, trigger warnings, and other such things are operating on a level similar to infants.
I would like to concede that I don't think it was always this way. There are even some liberals like Bill Maher who say that the left has gone nuts. There are people like him who haven't changed their opinions in 20 years, which would have made them a liberal 20 years ago but a conservative today. I think the further back in time you go, the more-so "liberalism" meant an actual political philosophy rather than just conformity and pandering without any consistency. The founding fathers were "liberals" of their time, but a lot of modern liberals seem to think that they are NAZIs.
Yes, it does seem to me to be accurate to describe what happened on Jan 6th as a riot. All the sources I read say that a lot of police got beat up. I don't know how that could have happened if there wasn't a brawl. But I think it is inaccurate to call it an insurrection, because if they were actually trying to overthrow the government, they would have brought their guns, and there would have been a lot of deaths.
As far as Kohlberg's stages of development go, I don't think women in STEM fields really makes a difference. In order to counter this point, you'd have to show that women have an objective moral standard rather than just siding with whoever sees weaker or more relatable. I just remembered this study which seems to back up my point https://slate.com/technology/2006/01/men-women-and-the-joy-of-punishment.html
In my personal experience, all my worst experiences with authority have been from women. It has only been female authority figures who went out of their way to make my life miserable when there was nothing in it for them. There were also a couple who seemed to take an arbitrary liking to me. My worst experience with male supervisors is that they just don't care about me. At least with a male supervisor, I know that if I do what he says, he will be okay with me. But sometimes a woman makes up her mind to hate you and there's nothing you can do about it.
I am not very impressed with female moral behavior in large groups. The #1 political issue for most women is whether they can kill their babies. I don't even have a strong opinion about when life begins, but it doesn't seem normal to me that a person ought to put killing their babies on the top of their priority list. I would think that a normal person would love their babies and want to take care of them. Also, 100% of marriages are initiated by men, but 70% of divorces are initiated by women. And the majority of serial killers were raised by single mothers (probably because women can't set boundaries, since most of them don't get to level 4). Women also show a complete lack of empathy for male suicide, deaths on the job, homelessness, etc. They asked for special treatment in education and at the job, but have taken no notice that more women graduate college now or that young women outearn men in some cities. Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying that women were the real victims in war. Can you imagine what people would say if someone said that men are the real victims of fatal childbirths? And lots of women recently have said that they would feel safer with a bear than a man. But suppose you replaced "man" with "black man" or "Jew"? Would this be acceptable? I could make a similar argument. A young child is more likely to be killed by his mother than a bear, so I would rather keep my child in the company of a bear than a woman. Can you imagine the hysteria if people were putting forward that argument in a serious tone?
I am ready to get banned for misogyny and general bigotry now. I am tired of the general low quality of discussion on this forum, so I don't even really care anymore. Yes, I am a racist sexist evil Hitler bigot. I hate everything good and pure in this world, including ice cream, babies, and puppies.
Says you while scrapping the bottom of the barrel of comments.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
In general, I'd say one should not be very impressed with human moral behavior in large groups. As Immanuel Kant said, "Nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind." Nothing truer was also never said
I agree with this, for sure. It wasn't at all an actual coup (though, I do have to leave open the "What if they got physical control of the building?" type stuff - and I can't be sure. old LSD Jesus or whatever would've done a number, but I imagine most would've gone home.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
I mentioned others, but it also does make a difference. You're saying there's a trend under which women do not achieve in the same ways men do, intellectually. I am showing that, currently, there is a trend in that exact direction. We need another 50 years before we could make a call, is my position there. I don't think you've established what you're claiming, yet.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Unfortunately, I can't counter this. My experience has also been overwhelmingly that men in positions of power over me are either: 1. Uncaring, or 2. Extremely caring. For women, its generally been 1. They like me; or 2. They don't like me and that has informed their actions toward me. This seems particularly true of the legal field.
That said, my experience isn't much to go on. I think women aren't used to be in positions of power. Goes along with why I think the 'trend' you note probably isn't a fair framing of what's happened/is happening. In terms of optics, I'm right there with you though.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
This isn't true. 100% means there is not a single marriage initiated by a woman. Do you care to own that claim? I suggest it is patently untrue.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
No, you wouldn't. You'd just have to show that your final half-sentence is not true. I don't think it is, any more than a majority of men do the same. Men are particularly good at doing that to women. Perhaps the sexes are just evolutionarily, understandably, a bit wary of each other in a moral sense given their differing capacities and strengths.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Men do this all the time. And women do it to women more often, interestingly.
I'm trying my best to bring you back into a discussion where you're not foot-out-door. IT's making it hard to drill down to what you actually think about these issues, rather htan how you're currently feeling.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Most women not being paid to say it use this as an apt metaphor for the fact that they've never been attacked by a bear, and neither has the vast majority of women. They have, in some probably small majority, been attacked in some way by a man. Its a bit of a ridiculous click-bait thing, and some younger women seem to have fallen into thinking it was serious. That's lamentable. I don't think that has anythign to do wiwth women's capacity for moral thinking. That seems total non sequitur.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
I would think most of those who take the above seriously, would agree with this but want you to do a decent human being and acknowledge, as the law does, that birth often relegates reason to a backseat, thus reducing culpability. Nothing in a man's world can do this, other than some form of argument about how hormones cause men to be overwhelmingly horny and act out of character as a result (I think there's something to this, but not enough to reduce culpability). But, hormones v hormones usually gets an "Oh, I hadn't thought of that" in my experience.
Edit: However, I highly, HIGHLY recommend not reply to Mikie. There's no discussion to be had. He's even right, most of the time. But its not worth the time, and it seems you're already upset by the generally left-leaning nature of the forum. Mikie is exceptional in the degree to which he mimics a Twitter user.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
All this is true provided you swallow right-wing propaganda whole. In that Alternative Reality, all of this makes perfect sense.
Fingers crossed.
As a libertarian leftist and negative consequentialist, I find reductionist simplistic statements like yours, Brendan, meaningless (ahistorical). The last century or so of 'political' events and conflicts amply shows that, especially for most citizens, governing ideologies are not determined by not consistently derived from ethical principles (or practices), even though the domains (can) overlap. Of course, any concrete, real world counter-examples would lend some credibility to the OP.
Because you're a man. You take bodily autonomy for granted. And you also can't think. You will never be raped and forced to carry the rapist's child to term. Can you imagine how awful that would be? No, because your posts show a total lack of imagination. There are nine states with laws like that on the books. The fact you can't understand why women are passionate about abortion rights tells me your level of moral development is very low.
Hopefully it won't come to that. I think this site can deal with different views. I tend to hold Leftist positions on many things but I am always happy to listen to a reasonable Right Winger, even if they hold views I disagree with.
In relation to men and women - I tend to think there is only a war between the sexes if that's how you frame reality to begin with. Confirmation bias.
I have worked with female bosses and colleagues for much of my life and have rarely had any issues. I prefer woman in charge to men. What I've seen is better people skills and more intelligence.
In my experince, the men who have problems with women tend to see women as alien or exotic creatures to beign with.
(This isn't loaded. I understand you'll have a reasonable answer) Do you keep this same logic when it comes to noting other, prima facie interesting statistics? Something like the crime statistics vs ethnicity? Is it "gee whizz" or is it "we're over-incarcerating?"
Quoting tim wood
This is a kind of disingenuous 'gotcha' I wouldn't have pegged you for. "DEI" is not "diversity, equity and inclusion" and that's it. DEI is a movement with tenets, expectations and results. I, for one, am not a fan. I think those three words are fine things to have a penchant for, though. Enforcing them seems... self-defeating.
Quoting tim wood
Equally disingenuous,. You either are, or are not aware of the literal billions in damage to predominantly black communities and businesses and (iirc) 19 dead bodies. If you're not, just say that.
Further, are you really trying to say BLM was some kind of 'business as usual'? It wasn't. Not by a loooooooooong shot. It was thuggery of the most obvious kind.
Quoting tim wood
He's using the word correctly. It is an ordinance with the force of law behind it.
Quoting tim wood
He should have never been charged with anything. Hero? Probably not. But htis is again just disingenuous.
Quoting tim wood
A law maker that cannot define the element of law which applies specifically to herself, in the context of lawmaking, is at fault. I cannot understand your attitude throughout htis reply. Its bizarre.
A woman is an adult human female. It is simple, and not at all a problem for 99 % of people throughout most of history.
Quoting tim wood
Your entire reply is condescending (mostly wrong) babbling. Keep that same energy and report your own posts my guy.
No, it wasn't always this way. I'm 79. I'm glad that I was an idealistic young man in the 1960s and not now in these years of national decline and climate crisis. Who is responsible for so much of the decline and climate crisis? Capitalists, of course. Consumers who drank the various flavors of Kool Aid the capitalists were selling. Blame the liberals, conservatives, communists, fascists, farmers, factory owners, democrats (small 'd'), dictators, Democrats and Republicans. All of us. The moral issues before us now are far more grave than a war in SE Asia which was a life and death matter for millions. Now we have life and death conundrums affecting billions--all of us.
A lot of things aren't the way they used to be (and at the same time, some things haven't changed a bit). I'm not confident we will find a lot of common ground to discuss morals and politics.
Years back I did a very unscientific analysis, gathered as much as I could regarding the convictions of politicians for crimes in the United States, and separated their crimes by political party. To my surprise the Democrats had more corruption convictions, while republicans excelled in sex-related crimes. Their respective leads were negligible, at best, so the analysis was fruitless, but the moral development seemed to be lacking in both just about the same.
I object to the left/right paradigm in general because left and right are so nearly identical in their underlying philosophies. They both hold to the republican belief in the sovereign power of political machinery, that so long as their people are allowed to tinker with it long enough and send it off running in the direction of their choosing, everyone will get The Good Life. Once their power is threatened they act as a praetorian guard. Sprinkle on top of this activity some surface-level rhetorical content and one might be able to convince others there is a distinguishing mark between these two factions, but on the whole it is all similar. Perhaps, the only differences are the incidence of the beneficiaries. At any rate, this specious divide is what we get for modelling a political spectrum after the seating plan of the National Assembly.
I also object to the social categorization at use here and for the same reasons I would do so for all sorts of identity politics. There are as many political beliefs as there are people, and the term Left and Right are by now slurs meant to impugn another, or otherwise to signal ones political purity, and not much else. A whole host of fallacy results.
You often say crazy shit. This is patently not one of those. This is bang on.
Were they all dwarfs?
The difficulty with your OP is that there's too much in it. This paragraph alone would take weeks to conceptually clarify. There is putative evidence in there somewhere. Also inferences. I don't have the time or inclination to try and explicate it all though. In any case, you haven't told us what you want to talk about. How can we help?
Therefore, what? Men aren't very good at marriage?
You don't see this as just self-aggrandizing:
The conduct of this hypothetical person isn't suggestive of an independent thinker. It describes someone distrustful at best and paranoid at worst. This activity describes preparations for a coming societal failure. Authority isn't forbidden in this context, but it's limited to only highly trusted people, like immediate or extended family, or, very commonly, those with shared similar religious views.
I mean sure, if you distrust societal structures, build your compound, but fabricating a "rugged individualistic free thinker" philosophy to justify it seems much.
Fear coupled with a rejection of cooperation is the driver here.
In this sense they have turned their politics into a religion where non-believers are pawns of Satan, and anyone that questions the party is a heretic.
Quoting NOS4A2
Exactly. Their shared underlying philosophy is authoritarianism.
Quoting BC
Would you say that it started getting worse when their numbers started declining and the number of independents and moderates started growing? It's as if they are seeing the demise of the political left and right and are now engaging in underhanded and manipulative tactics in a vain attempt to hold on to their dwindling flock of followers.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I would think that by definition a polarized social and political environment implies that there is such a wide gap between the ways differing communities look at the world that it becomes impossible for the warring groups to meet each other at a moderate center.
I am far from alone in only recently discovering that childhood friends, relatives, acquaintances from the neighborhoods adhere to political views that are profoundly alien to my ways of thinking. My niece was born and raised in Orlando, Florida , went to college and graduate school out of state, and a few years ago moved back to Orlando with her husband. They decide they had to leave Orlando because the political atmosphere had become so oppressively right wing. They are far from political activists. On the contrary, in any large northern city they would be considered middle of the road. Meanwhile a friend of mine is considering leaving the Chicago area because he is so alienated by the generally left-leaning perspectives of those he deals with. Are you telling me you dont have experiences on your own like this to share?
Correct. When the moderates leave your party all that is left are the extremists.
When people of a certain political persuasion leave a state and move to another that shares their views you will eventually gets states that are encampment of the left and right. Florida used to be a purple state but right-leaning people from New York and Californua have left those States and move to Florida which is now red and just makes Cali and New York more blue.
I dont think the people in Massachusetts and Florida, California and Oklahoma ( London and rural England) are extremists if that implies that their views are irrational, objectively wrong or unjustifiable. Its a matter of traditionalists vs much newer ways of thinking. The rural
areas and lower population density cities have changed their traditional views more slowly than those of the large cities, particularly since the 1960s social revolution, to the point that each speaks a different language and is unrecognizable to the other.
The left and right are poorly defined and do not maintain consistency through time.
G.W. Bush was a interventionist who allowed fairly open immigration from Mexico and believed in free trade. That doesn't describe Trump in any way.
Transsexuals playing in sports is a hot button issue for the left, a far distance from the opposition of to gay marriage and the don't ask, don't tell policies of Clinton.
Does anyone care about health care costs anymore? I remember that being a thing.
The point being that you have to expect changes in membership in any organization that constantly changes its charter.
I never said they were. I said that what is left in the party (Dems and Reps) are extremists. States are still composed of opposing parties and moderates, but since we are ruled by a majority and the majority can shift, then it is possible that some states might swing one way or the other, or change altogether (as in my example of Florida).
I do think that there are people that are members of the parties that are not extremists. They may be life-long Republicans or Democrats, but the parties have changed with many claiming that they did not leave the party, the party left them. If you want to limit extremism then either stay and fight for the moderate mantra in your party, or just abolish political parties.
And when I say extremists, I mean authoritarians, as authoritarians are extreme in a free society.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You focus on political parties, but I think they are just reflecting the polarization I just described in the general population. I have no reason to expect members of Congress to start singing kumbaya together until small town and big city America begin to see the world in ways that are more alike.
They are only poorly defined because authoritarians have used these labels as a means of manipulating the population.
As NOS4A2 said,
Quoting NOS4A2
For instance, when I get into a debate with a Republican on the topic of freedom of religion and rejecting the idea of prayer in public schools, I'm accused of being a leftists. When I get into a debate with a Democrat on the topic of free speech and women's rights and transgenderism, I'm accused of being a right-winger. I'm an independent Libertarian. It's as if there is no middle ground for these people. Everything is black and white.
The level of polarization today is not what it was 30-40 years ago. What changed? It seems to me that the rhetoric on the left and right has become more aggressive and tribalistic and that is what is driving the polarization.
Why do we even bother listening to what politicians say in the first place when they only speak in generalities and platitudes. We can predict what a Democrat or Republican will say on either side of the issue, or what they will say about each other. I no longer care what a politician says. I only care about what they do, which is often different from what they say.
Not giving them public platforms on mass media sure would save a lot of money, time, better tv programming, more interesting social media as well as wear on the environment: all that travel, all those balloons...! Each candidate should campaign in their own district, on foot and in the town hall. The party platforms - however many apply - should be published in the news outlets of the states in which they have a candidate. Campaigns to run for one month prior to each election.
That way, people can vote for whoever they think comes closest to their own level of morality.
(must repaint keyboard.)
If the population has grown more heterogenous over time, then tribal disputes should become more prevalent. As in, if we're all in the same tribe, we have fewer disputes, but we're not less tribalistic. We just don't have any meaningful competitors.
Quoting Harry Hindu
We could rid of every politician in the country and it wouldnt have the slightest effect on the polarized split between worldviews. This is not about what politicians or political parties say. It is about fundamental differences in philosophical outlook. One doesnt derive such an outlook from politicians. It is formed through interactions within ones family and social milieu.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I know that principled conservatives of the socially moderate William Buckley-National Review strand of republicanism (George Will, David Frum, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Lynn Cheney, Peter Wehner, etc) were pushed out of the new populist republican party.
If that makes MAGA populism extreme, it also means that a significant minority of the country identifies with it to some extent.
Which places your moderate libertarianism in a big messy tent alongside the other groups who oppose MAGA, which includes RHINO republicans, moderate and progressive democrats and Sanders-style socialists. I imagine you share the most with RHINO republicans and perhaps some moderate democrats. Plenty of democrats were never fully onboard wokism, and simply tolerated it because they supported other elements the party stands for. The lesson is that when the extreme ends of the political spectrum are pushed as far apart as they are now, it shrinks the middle. And it wasnt the politicians who did the pushing, it was the people.
Obama's election. Conservatives could not deal with a black man as president, so to cope they tried to "other" him and went down a rabbit hole of birtherism, qanon, pizzagate, antivax, stolen election nonsense where conspiracies and enemies are everywhere. They're still falling.
I don't see it as self-referential at all, let along aggrandizing. I think its a totally reasonable set of things to say (not true of everything he's said, granted).
Quoting Hanover
I quite disagree. Unfortunately, that might speak to your state of mind with regard to his points. I don't know that, I'm just offering an explainer for why we see it so differently. It may also just mean that I'm in some category you have laid out by which I am not 'engaging' with what's being said. I don't know, really but I see nothing wrong with that quote. It just seems pointless to wade in to why we see it so differently (though, I'm open to that i guess).
Quoting Hanover
I really don't think so, and having (I think) understood OP a bit better than most here, it seems that this quoted line will be read as a hook-line-sinker type of statement. You're drinking the kool aid. Again, I don't know if that's the case or whatever but I can see that this seems to just reject OP on the basis that you see things differently to the writer. That's fine... He's likely to say something dumb about it, but that's not what I'm defending.
Quoting tim wood
I would have preferred an answer to the question. I am asking about how you apply logic to similar (in my opinion, indistinguishable) scenarios. I very much appreciate what you're getting across and roughly speaking, agree with how stats get used etc... but this doesn't help me understand what you're saying or whether its consistent. I was interested in that. I did not ask for an analysis of old mate's chosen statistical pull. In any case, all this does is show me that you use this assessment here, and wont answer as to whether it applies elsewhere. You clearly have views in those 'elsewhere', so this seems obviously disingenuous. If that's annoying, I am not bothered.
Quoting tim wood
It wasn't. I wanted a straight answer. Not prevarication. I suppose I can understand from this that you think its a complex issue and it requires a different assessment than that of hiring in regard to ethnicity. Ok. I don't think so, though. As to 'over-incarcerating' I'm having a hard time not thinking you're doing a bit of trolling here. Are you unaware of this concept? For what it's worth, 'mass incarceration' is also used. This article is on point at least in terms of presenting the ball park i'm in with this. No comment on it's actual content/conclusions.
Quoting tim wood
That's fair. I think I have an idea, but it matters not. That's totally fair (including the exposition following..)
Quoting tim wood
Well, as far as I'm concerned this is prevarication. I am aware of history, and it's lead-ins to modern events. This simply isn't relevant to the fact that leftists encouraged and carried out billions in damage and violence(19 dead, i believe) in mainly black and Hispanic communities. In terms of the modern West, this is on the most extreme end of ideological behaviour. I think only this was what was being pointed out there. Again, what OP insinuated I'm not particularly here or there on.
Quoting tim wood
I am a legal professional. A Decree is "an official order that has the force of law". As google would have shown you. I am not confusing the two, at all.
Quoting tim wood
Given what you've quoted, I cannot made heads of tails of this. All is already responded to in the portion of my reply you quoted. Particularly the bolded part which is clearly wrong, as I've just done that and am neither confused, nor ignorant. It take it then, this is confusing or not easy for you. That's fine. It is easy and not confusing for me.
Quoting tim wood
No. Just stop making shit up about things i've said. It'll be way easier my dude.
Quoting RogueAI
Are you even close to being in the vicinity of serious?
Yes, you can. Are they coherent, consistent, thought-out and hang together in a way that gives a complete picture of hte person's/group's moral thinking.
Again, you can disagree with the positions, but a more developed morality will have the hallmarks of any well-developed argument. If you don't think well-developed arguments are possible, then I concede.
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
Disagree.
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
That is exactly what he's been saying, as I see it. Clearly an axe to grind with the Left though, no doubt.
Exactly what I said would happen, has happened. *sigh*. The cognitive dissonance in this forum, on solely political issues, is impressive.
No doubt a good many conservatives disliked the idea of a black Liberal president, but they were able to get on with life as we know it. Some people to the right of Attila the Hun, however, were filled with acute cognitive dissonance. The rabbit hole of birtherism might be a specific reaction to Obama, but I don't see the rabbit holes of stolen elections, Q-anon, pizza gate, anti-vaxing, and so on being unique to the Obama election reaction. It seems like there is always a sizzle of conspiracy out on the edge of the pan that never turns into a full boil (which would be very bad news).
Trump promoted the stolen 2020 election conspiracy quite deliberately and in the long run, successfully, as a strategy to keep his base motivated.
:up: :up:
Re: fwiw, contextualizing America's 'polarization' no doubt a disputable guess (2021) ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/504611
i.e. ethics / moral norms (e.g. OP's "developmental stages" :roll:) are not the drivers or causes of contemporary 'extremism'.
None of this is specific about why the group you're saying is "more developed" is more developed. It honestly just looks to me like, rather than them individually having "more developed mortality", you're getting the illusion of consistency because as a group they have a much more conforming, uniform morality.
But if course a group being more uniform doesn't mean the morality of the individuals in that group are more developed.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
These are hallmarks of development and effort in assessing ones views. You do not need to agree with the views. I think Nietzsche is one of hte worse philosophers of all time. But calling his work "under-developed" is, i take it, a laugh.
If you're simply not capable of affording something like "well-developed" to something because of hte political flavour involved, that's fine. I don't ascribe to or enjoy the standard Conservative moral either. Even ignoring hte overly religious aspects. But it is patently wrong to say it is not well-developed (particularly as compared to the varied, hotch-potch (this is the real term) of random personal grievanced that "left wing morality" appears as.
I don't much care to use either group "as a group" though, in discussion. I'm just responding to what's been said in this thread.
Thank you; appreciate it.
Quoting tim wood
Definitely true.
Quoting tim wood
I may have misunderstood, but it was quite loaded on the back of everything that came before it. I would also say it seems self-evident, but y'know, you're asking so I must be wrong.
Quoting tim wood
It is not (quite). An ordinance is simply a law enacted by local government. Decree is the right word here. Law is just a broader term under which decrees also fall. They happen all the time.
Quoting tim wood
Weird way to ask lol (i'm jesting, entirely. He's a difficult character).
Quoting tim wood
Not understanding what she's meant to be doing (in that particular context, anyway. She seems a totally stand up legislator generally).
Quoting tim wood
I'm not quite sure what you mean. I don't want to harm anyway. But in this case the margin is that on one side, we use definitions for terms in law, and on the other we just do whatever the fuck we want and then expect law to protect us, I have no time for it. I'm not interested in protecting a minority if they are outwardly hostile to the majority and refuse social convention. They can sleep in that bed (as I do, along many lines for which I don't adhere to a social norm). I see nothing wrong with this. Law need be best applied to the middle ground, not the extreme.
Quoting tim wood
Can't tell if you do want me to say what it is, or whether you don't LOL.
Quoting tim wood
Haha is all i can say. I am not.
I am arguing points of my own, or in some other cases noting where you're saying something irrelevant to the OP (the Decree one is a good example. You were wrong, and he might not even know why). I am entitled to do so, to help a brotha out, as it were. He isn't doing too well.
Quoting tim wood
Yes, clearly. And fair enough. It was a contentious OP with quite a bit to get through. Though, it is very much relevant that it goes against the general grain of thought here. It was always going to be contentious, even if in the wider world it isn't. So, yeah, that's totally normal stuff.
Quoting tim wood
I feel (and it seems, in retrospect, fairly obvious) I have done both of these. I'm happy to take questions from the audience though (lol). However, there's a difference between jumping in to correct what seem obvious mistakes of either interpretation or reading/vocabulary and actually arguing the points therein. I agree with a lot of what he's said in the OP - I disagree with a lot. Hell, my second (i think) reply was pushing back.
Quoting tim wood
They same way Dems want to do this to Trump. You do not need race to explain why life-long (and clearly indebted-to-party) Repubs would want a particularly effective, lightning-rod Democrat who took over from GWB at a time that, even plenty of Repub voters saw Obama as a watershed moment in US history. You only need one or more of stupidity, intense party affiliation and a lack of critical thinking. Additionally, Obama ran plenty of (now)conservative policies (think a couple of have been brought up recently). Perhaps he was a threat tot he two-party system?
But this isn't what he was saying/ I was asking. Conservatives are not McConnell. They aren't even the party. They are the voters. And insinuating all conservative voters are overtly racist is absurd and hateful (not to mention patently false).
You've said what well developed means, you've insisted that conservatives match it, but you haven't shown why you think that. Don't keep telling me what well developed means to you, show why conservatives match it and others don't.
What justification are you looking for my guy?
I look at the two sets of moral generalities - one seems cogent, the other not so. If you disagree, that's fine, but that's not what's being interrogated.
Your response would've made more sense in the form of something like
"Ah, i see. Well, in this case, I don't think conservatives are well-developed".
I'd have said "Cool. It's a difficult one, and I don't like their morality per se due to the religious overtones, so I can understand that".
Quoting tim wood
From you or me? I can't see the relation to our exchange there. Fwiw, I don't think we're comparing apples and oranges (partially, i assume, because the preceding paragraph doesn't illustrate it to me). They are two political parties that operate the same way, and always have.
So I know what you mean by well developed, fantastic, I still don't know why you think conservative morality is more well developed. It's not obvious, I don't take it for granted like you do, so talking about it like it's an obvious fact anybody should agree with just doesn't make sense.
What I mean by tribal is that certain groups close themselves off from other competing ideas, essentially creating a bubble where their ideas are never questioned or criticized.
Disputes and competition are good things. They are the means by which progress is made - as long as individuals have the freedom to express their ideas on a fair playing field. Promote logic and reason, not an individuals' subjective feelings and truths, as the referees.
Agreed. It depends on the type of election though. Presidential elections require the entire country to be involved. We could certainly shorten the length of the campaign and need to stop the flow of money into campaigns to get a balanced playing field. All candidates get equal time to express their ideas and vision for the future. No political parties. We vote in a preliminary election no more than 3 months out from the general election that determines the top 2-3 candidates and then we vote for the finals in the general.
This cannot be completely true because there are people who have views that are the antithesis of what their family or friends hold.
I'd be willing to bet that many, if not most, Dems and Reps would not know who to vote for if there weren't Ds and Rs next to candidates names on the ballot. All you have to do is look at the hypocrisy on both sides where they support an idea or action if their own party proposes it, but if the other side were to propose the same idea, then it is a bad idea and must be opposed.
When you get into a debate with these people, you realize that they live in a bubble - unaware that their party has done the same thing they are blaming the other side on. They have turned their political party into a religion and after living in a these separate bubbles for so long - living in their truth, and not THE truth.
So, in a way, you are correct. They have formed their ideas through their interactions. The problem is they segregated themselves by focusing on listening to one side, and one side only as a form of confirmation bias. If political parties were abolished there would be no more teams for the media to play on and be a mouthpiece for. It's time to pop the bubbles.,
It seems to me that it started before that as your general label of all conservatives being racist is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
If there are no political parties, who says you need a special election for a president? You're a fan of voting for specific candidates, including independents, who will then enact legislation on your behalf. So why not let them elect one of their member as chief administrator and a second for backup? Also key cabinet positions that don't require special expertise. Review their performance after two years and replace them if the constituents want to.
And fps, stop making jurisprudence and law enforcement political!
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
If you're disagreeing, there's no conversation to be had. Your conception of 'well-developed' is alien to me. You don't want to afford "conservatives" the plain language whicih applies to them, maybe because its hard to admit given a left-leaning bias. I can understand this, but I cannot accept that this:
Quoting flannel jesus
Isn't ignorance.
That's like saying "saxophone players are obviously more kind than flute players", and I ask, "why do you think that? How is that obvious?" and you just keep replying with a definition of kindness, "the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate"
Good, I get kindness is "the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate", so WHY DO YOU THINK SAXOPHONE PLAYERS ARE MORE OF THAT!?!?!?!??! Don't keep repeating what kindness means, tell me why you think saxophone players are more kind than flutists. Repeating the definition doesn't explain why you think that. It's only the beginning of the explanation, you still have the entire rest of it to go.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is what I see in Conservative morality. Those aspects come out when I speak to a conservative about their moral positions, despite disagreeing with a large proportion of the actual moral statements they would make (or, have, in the conversations I have had).
Can you be a bit clearer in what you actually want? I see this:
Quoting flannel jesus
Quoting flannel jesus
And there's an answer right above this, which I gave in briefer form earlier.
What more do you need? I am not being disingenuous. I want to answer your question, but by "aspect" I can't tell what you mean, given i've told you what attributes give it the flavour I'm driving at.
Aside: This could be answered by pointing out a worse-developed "lefty" morality, rather than why Conservatives are per se more-developed so please do be clear what you want. Just explaining the various positions conservatives hold, and why they hang together wont give you what you want.
But you still aren't saying why. What about conservative morality matches those aspects specifically? What about non-conservative morality doen't match those aspects specifically?
If you define kindness as "the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate", I still don't know why you think saxophonists are 'obviously more kind than flutists', right? I know what you think kindness means, but I don't know why you think it applies more to one group than another. Same thing is going on here. I know what you MEAN by 'more developed', but I don't know why you think that's true of that group, and it's certainly not obvious, any more than it should be obvious why saxophonists are more kind. Right? Is it obvious to you why I think saxophonists are more kind?
Quoting NOS4A2
That is interesting. I'd never heard of that before, but it sounds possible.
You said that left/right are just pejorative's now. I think there is a difference between the politicians and the constituents. I would agree that I think all/most of the politicians are liars putting on an act, but I think the constituents are very different. I'm still of the opinion that the "left" just believes whatever the government/media tell them, and that their espoused moral beliefs are mostly for show. The "right" is anyone who is opposed to the urban monoculture, usually because they do have genuine moral beliefs, and any system of consistent sincere beliefs must be in opposition to an inconsistent and domineering philosophy. The right is fractured though, because there are many belief systems that are mostly internally consistent, but are not consistent with one-another.
This goes further than your comment, but I'll discuss my political beliefs a little more. I see all the politicians as liars putting on an act. I see the left as willingly going along with the bad things that the government is doing, and patting themselves on the back for their feigned righteousness. I see the right as seeing the problems, but mostly waiting for someone in government to fix the problems, which rarely happens. I have tried repeatedly to organize on a local level to do something like set up a community daycare, community watch, to preferentially hire people with similar political beliefs, etc, in order to do at least SOMETHING to deal with the dysfunction in society, but never got anywhere due to lack of interest from other people. I admire people who do manage to build alternative systems, like Satoshi Nakamoto, the people who made CrowdHealth, and local religious communities.
Some people have said that this only makes sense if you believe in right-wing conspiracy theories. I think if you can't see that things are going very badly, and that government is responsible for most of it, then you are willfully blind.
I will reply to some other comments that stood out to me.
My original post was about moral development with regards to Kohlberg's model, and I don't see the connection between Kohlberg and to women being in STEM. So far as I'm aware, intelligence, career choice, and education are not the same thing as moral development.
Someone said that because I don't know why women support abortion so strongly, I must not have any empathy for women wanting bodily autonomy. Would this argument also apply to women who are against abortion? I have done a little bit of research just now. I found a link saying that abortion is women's #1 political issue (https://apnews.com/article/younger-women-abortion-survey-c8c504a7b9b5a92b4c101a57a3e3a4dc). However, it appears that this is not the case for all times and for all groups of women. At any rate, abortion is very high on the priority list, at least sometimes beating ALL other topics, such as the economy, inflation, environment, cancer, war, etc. You suggested that women need abortion due to rape. I had ChatGPT look up some stats. Apparently, about 1 million abortions happen per year, but only about 130 thousand rapes happen per year. So, if every single rape caused a pregnancy, then 87% of abortions are still happening because women don't want to have to deal with the consequences of their own bad choices. If there were a rape epidemic, so that rape were a bigger issue to women than inflation/education/health/war etc, then I guess it would make sense to me that abortion would be among the first of women's issues (although I'd think that getting the streets safe should be #1 in that case). But when abortion is a woman's #1 issue, and +87% of abortions happen in order to avoid responsibility for their own choices, I guess I'll just leave it there. I do understand that if a woman got pregnant due to rape and was arbitrarily blocked from abortion, she'd likely be really angry. But that's not what happens most of the time.
Some people said some stuff that I thought was interesting, but I don't think anybody directly addressed my argument.
I think my main points were:
1. the "left" in the USA has a lower level of moral development than the "right"
2. Kohlberg was probably right that women on average have a lower level of moral development than men
These points would be consistent with:
1. The work of Kohlberg
2. The work of Jonathan Haidt
3. This study https://slate.com/technology/2006/01/men-women-and-the-joy-of-punishment.html
4. Female voting patterns
5. Evolutionary psychology, if patriarchy is rooted in our biology
6. The fact (if you have eyes to see) that a lot of the stuff the "left" does is nuts
Lots of people, as expected, took exception to my main points, but I didn't notice any real arguments trying to refute the supporting evidence.
I did notice that the guy to whom I said that liberals like to pretend they were born yesterday and make you explain everything to them then asked me, "What did BLM burn?" among other ignorant questions. I also noticed that after I said one side has arguments and the other has epithets, I think I saw at least half a dozen replies which quoted something I said and then gave a one sentence reply asserting that I was sexist/bigot/ignorant etc.
Its occurring to me I subconsciously saw the question as this, above and thought something like "Surely, that ambiguous of a question isn't being asked?" and perhaps my response "Well, I look at/hear about CM (conservative morality) and it appears more coherent, consistent and thought-out (again, even I feel the need to distance myself from defense of same on moral grounds). So, i apologise for the terseness of the last couple of replies. I should have been able to notice this and lay it out.
I think one aspect that strikes me as clear rather than esoteric as most are, is the incredibly widely shared nature of Conservative morality. One of the biggest things I've taken away from conversations is that whether fiscal or social, conservatives tend to stick together on their views and that appears a strategy rather than a failure of imagination, to me. One reason told to me is to counteract the very disparate and fracture "left" morally speaking(on this, I think they're overlooking a rather large elephant in their own room, but that's an aside - leftists stick together to avoid reproach from peers(whether true, no matter. This is the strategy)). I tend to agree that the Left is a bit more amorphous. An example (albeit, a relatively trivial one) would be that during COVID there was stark divide between right/left. In New Zealand, we had an entire campaign from the Labour (left, but only standard left. We have the fringe groups too) which hinged literally, and without my needing to fudge things: Be Kind. That was it. Be Kind. Nothing else.
They did exactly (and conveniently for me) what you've charged me with and they used the concept you used as an example, so I hope this hits in some way. What that campaign actually did was make leftists fearful, paranoid and extremely anti-social incapable of their own moral reasoning. Further, it incited other institutions (insurance companies, for instance) to push the exact same narrative as a response to the unsophisticated nature of leftist morality. The point was to grab that demographic in a moment of fear, with the phrase "Kindness Is Everything". Put frankly, this is fucking ridiculous and one of hte least-sophisticated responses to the moral crisis of COVID one could imagine (besides ignoring it which no one actually did, in aggregate). And I note that the facts of COVID aren't really, because they weren't the same as they are now, it seems (lab leak being a good example).
The point is that the entire movement hinged on an ill-defined cudgel used against anyone who even dared question the narrative or people's choices (question - not attack). It had nothing to do with the facts or what is 'best'. It was just an ideological move that kept people fearful of their neighbours.
The "right" narrative was "Hang on a minute, let's sort out some details before unilaterally legislating the reduction of freedom across the entire nation". The right were, admittedly, calling people stupid sheep for the above, which is not helpful, but it is at least reasoned on those facts.
But they were not calling people racist, bigoted, hateful and illiterate for asking the questions that have now been answered in a way that would have supported their position at the time.
The left was. I was called racist for thinking it perhaps a bit odd for Maori to be given full priority for vaccinations when the disease is novel, and we have no idea what markers might have an effect on the efficacy of the vaccine. Death threats were lobbed at those flouting the lockdown rules. Even when they posed no threat to anyone.
Now, these appear to be paradigmatic ways I see the two groups responding to issues. I do not see right-wingers trying to brow-beat people into conceding political ground. I don't see the use of personal attacks as a standard method for persuasion. I don't see a complete lack of unity. I don't see a total lack of coherent moral views within the same person (largely because of the singular source: religion. Notwithstanding - I just hate that aspect). I am currently trying to seek answers as to why the left are so hard-up for coherent moral systems within my phil classes at University. It is tough going.
The right have a simple answer: Religion. However, they will tell you outright where their religion fails to give 'correct' answers. The left say things like "All those who voted for Trump are Evil". This is cartoonish bullshit. I do see a lot of similar things (feminism is cancer, for one) among the right, but its small pockets and in most cases memery. The left doesn't have those to fall back on. They double down on the cartoonish stuff, where the right doesn't (IN MY EXPERIENCE. I AM NOT A SAGE).
Is this a bit closer to what you want to see? Again, I am not being disingenous.
You really think it's ambiguous? You say something is obviously true, I want it detailed why it's true, and asking "why do you think that's true" is ambiguous? I don't get it.
Quoting AmadeusD
So they're more conformist as a group, sure, I did anticipate that in a prior post, but that doesn't mean as individuals they have more well developed morality, does it? Two lefties could have very different senses of mortality from each other, but each individually have a well developed idea about what is and is not morally acceptable. You know what I mean?
MAGA isn't a normal conservative movement. Sure, many leftist commentators will say that this is actual right-wing politics simply exposed to it's true nature, but this isn't so. Radical authoritarian populism is quite different from the typical right-wing politics, just as Jonathan Haidt isn't a believer in the MAGA cult.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Especially in the US the right doesn't assume for the government to fix the problems, that is more of a leftist view. I would say that many on the right think that with the government, they are simply buying a service as they do in the private sector for other services. So you pay taxes and get services like the police, legal system, fire department and so on. And when they get poor service, they are angry. And thus many libertarians think that many services could be simply be provided by the private sector.
This view totally underestimates the role and importance of the institutions that a government creates. The liberitarian might make an exception when it comes to national defense (as even they understand that going with private armies wouldn't be such a great idea), but otherwise everything is just a service.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
:brow:
Or let the 1st runner up be VP and the 2nd runner up get to be Sec of State to make compromise part of the system. I would rather have citizens vote rather than let them decide which would just create an environment where they work to enrich themselves by performing favors in return for positions of power.
All positions must max out at two terms, and Supreme Court Justices should be limited to 16 or 20 year terms.
Sure they do. They want the government to "fix the problem" of gay marriage by defining it as a union between a man and a woman. The Libertarian's stance is, "Why are we looking to the government to define marriage in the first place?"
They want the government to "fix the problem" of abortion and God being eliminated from public schools.
Both sides look to the government to "fix problems", either economic or social, depending on which side you are on. So yours, and others, tactic to put Libertarians on the right side shows that you all really understand what Libertarianism is.
Quoting ssu
Libertarians support the ideas behind the Bill of Rights and the checks-and-balances system. We support the existence of a police force to protect individuals from other citizens that do not respect other people's rights as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and an independent body that monitors the actions of the police to ensure the same thing.
Okay on the first, though I prefer one 4-year term, staggered, with half of the incumbents overlapping with rookies, so there is both experience and fresh input and less opportunity to consolidate power. If there is no financial backing involved, one level of corruption is eliminated; if lobbying forbidden, there is another. Get rid of a third by not having elected officials award government contracts to corporations and a fourth if no lucrative or influental position is by political appointment. This is especially important as regards high court judges: all judges should be elected by their peers. When they retire depends on competence, health or personal choice. (Some people are worn by their sixties, some can still be going strong at 80) Likewise top civil service posts should be earned through work record, not favour.
Yes, but most of the problems that need fixing were created by governments past, and/or a privileged class controlling some aspects of government.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What it is is naive. The ideology can maybe work with groups of a hundred people, not in a large, diverse population, not in a capitalist society and certainly not in a nation with international relations.
I'm too old too smart to want it.
Talk about getting things ass-backwards. Leftists are trying (in their own inept way) to compensate for centuries of discrimination against women and minorities - imposed by the predecessors of MAGA.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Who is this "they"? Millions of Americans are genuinely angry at Musk for destroying essential government programs that they rely on. A few disgruntled people are doing stupid shit. Leftists are still buying electric cars - just not Teslas.
Etc
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Talk about getting things ass-backwards. MAGA is totally about power - about obeisance to Trump. Virtually everyone Republican who has disagreed with Trump has been ejected from the party - Cheney, Barr, etc
The fact that seemingly intelligent people (like yourself) buy into this upside down view of reality is a tragedy.
Ok, with "the government" I'm more talking about the executive branch. Naturally the right wants there to be the legislature and the judiciary too. This complex relation is shown when especially the right wants to act legislation to protect the freedom's and the rights of the citizen from the government.
Left-libertarianism might sound as an oxymoron, but it isn't at all, especially outside the United States. In the US it is right-wing libertarianism that dominates libertarianism, but I guess both have strong roots in classic liberalism.
It is still going on today, building on what came before - thanks to the two-party oligarchy.
Quoting Vera Mont
Ridiculous. If it works for a hundred people here and a hundred people over there, then why would it not be the same if those two groups interacted? It makes no difference in the size of the group. The difference is simply how you decide to treat other people - either by getting personally involved in their lives and making their life choices for them, or living your life and letting others live theirs.
Yet the executive branch can only enforce the laws made by the legislature and interpreted by the judiciary.
Both the executive and legislature have expanded the powers of their branches, establishing precedence for when the other party takes power, essentially both parties working together to expand the powers of government influence in our lives.
Left-Libertarianism = moderate Democrats
Right-Libertarianism = moderate Republicans
Communists = extreme Democrats
Fascists = extreme Republicans
Left or right Libertarians can only be those that are abandoning Libertarian views in favor of more authoritarian ones, as in looking to gov. to solve their problems, when their problem is the need to tell others how to live and what "choices" they can make.
Interaction, no problem; merging, huge problem. That's what happened to tribal cultures when they became - or were subsumed by - nations.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It absolutely does. You can know 99 other people, at least to speak to or work with; you cannot know millions. 100 people can form consensus on what's in their individual and collective interest, since these overlap to a great degree and the welfare of each is the welfare of all, so it's good for you to help your neighbour and be trusted by him. 1,000,000 people share very little of common interest; each depends on only a few others; they cannot know whom to trust nor have the same regard for all the others. The larger the group, the harder it is to communicate and keep track of what others are doing, harder to care what happens to each stranger. But much easier to lie, cheat and exploit.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, it's not. What I decide doesn't influence people who want something different - like pillage the environment in which I live, limit my freedom of movement, foist their religious beliefs on me, or use my labour to enrich themselves. If they're stronger then me or have more friends, my decisions matter not at all.
I see concern for liberty and justice for all, for which the US has stood for since its beginning. I do not see the connection between that and being a child because it comes with responsibility and the possibility of manifesting a better reality for all of mankind. Our democracy is supposed to be rule by reason, not authoritarian power over the masses.
To me, MAGA is equal to Hitler's propaganda used to manipulate the masses who have been prepared to follow, instead of lead, since the 1958 National Defense Education Act replaced the US model of education with the German model of education for a technological society with unknown values. Since that change in the purpose of education, we have left moral training up to the Church, and now the US is what we defended our democracy against. Church authority is based on superstition and myth and stands in the way of education for good moral reasoning that is essential to democracy. This has caused a moral crisis that threatens our democracy because it leads to authoritarianism.
I hate labeling! Politics needs to be about issues, not imagined divisions.
Only when our democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended, and we haven't done that since 1958. We need to know history and civics. We need literacy in great literature to have a great nation.
Democracy is based on the notion that we can learn and we can do better when all learn and share responsibility for self-government. This mentality is not about choosing sides and being winners or losers as though politics were a form of football.
Please, can we drop labels and talk issues?
Democracy is rule by reason, not authority over the people. Not grabbing power like Trump is attempting to do. If that is not understood, we have fought every war for nothing.
Rule by law begins with reasoning. It is understanding logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe, and good manners. Science supports democracy, not Christianity with its superstition and myth.
Which is why the Trump miministration is in such a hurry to abolish science, education and free speech. Their aim is to reduce citizens to abjectly cowering serfs, fighting one another for crumbs off their oppressors' table.
There are two moves made in this statement. First, liberals have no idea what a conservative thought process is or how conservative ideals can be rationally supported. And second, liberals conclude that conservatives are just evil. Both conservatives and liberals are too quick to make this second move, but I see it as more essential to way the left talks to conservatives (or won't talk to conservatives).
Most liberals can't (or won't) think like a conservative at all. It's why they are shocked Trump won both elections. It is more essential to the leftist methodology to put people into buckets and baskets, and when the people in those baskets won't use leftist language to reason and argue their way out of the simplistic bucket, the leftist can quickly conclude that such people must simply be deplorable, or evil, or just stupid. So the explanation for how Trump won is that, most of America is stupid and/or evil. There is no rational explanation.
But conservatives know how to behave and think like a leftist, and can even see the justification and rationality of leftism. There is much room for negotiation and an ability to compromise with a conservative; there is nothing to negotiate (only absolutes exist) to a leftist. And compromise is only defeat to a leftist (unless it is one leftist compromising with another leftist, presumably to fight another day anyway).
Quoting Joshs
I don't know if you (or Brendan) are liberal or conservative, but this quote sounds like an example that "liberals have no idea what conservatives think and they think that conservatives are just evil."
MAGA is not equivalent to conservative, just like Marxist or Socialist aren't equivalent to liberal. So maybe this doesn't really address the OP.
And maybe it doesn't help anyone to manage the border, and so the US, they way Biden did. Maybe Maga is onto something moral? To better the planet? Impossible to conceive? How about China - no reason whatsoever to be suspicious of their progress around the planet?
____________
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Quoting RogueAI
This is a great example (assuming Brendan is the conservative and RogueAI is the liberal). Brendan maybe shouldn't have said "killing their babies" and should have just said "terminating pregnancy", but he is discussing priority lists. RogueAI responds to the idea that abortion may be bad, or a lower priority issue with "because you're a man" putting Brendan's whole thought process and his humanity in a bucket - men - and downgrading that bucket with "you take...for granted" and "you can't think" and "you will never be...forced" and "lack of imagination" and "you can't understand" and "level of moral development is very low."
Brendan is sub-human now - no reason to argue an opposing point with him. Who would want to debate anything with such a "man"?? Who would want to use their imagination to understand how Brendan could say killing human fetuses isn't normal or good? What kind of human could think abortion rights is not a priority? Rhetorical questions in no need of exploring - because liberals have no idea how conservatives think, or if they think at all.
_______________
Quoting NOS4A2
Spot on. There are no true baskets of people. The basket called "maga" is smaller than any one of its members. Just like the basket called "marxist" is antithetical to the individual working man or woman. We are each a political party of one member, or we should be, resisting anyone who thinks they know anything important about us because we registered "democrat" or "republican", and resisting our own biases when we learn someone else is registered some other way.
Okay, but this shift does not begin with him, and we can not resolve the problem without a better understanding of it. Eisenhower warned us of the Military Industrial Complex and we need to be aware of it and the changes in education that led us to electing our own Hitler. And preachers are telling us Trump is so strong because God stands by Trump. This is the Germany that followed Hitler because we adopted the German models of bureaucracy and education. We internalized our enemy to have the strongest military force on earth.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think conservatives, liberals and MAGA are all thinking morally according to different schemes of understanding. The key word here is understanding, not morality. They all want to do good, but their ways of figuring out how others think differs in its effectiveness at anticipating such behavioral processes. I think of such skills at mindreading as products of philosophical worldviews thar develop over human history. In theory, then, we get better and better over the course of cultural evolution at making sense of of each other in ways that allow us to avoid the moral condemnation that comes from utterly failing to grasp how the other sees things. This development can be thought of as subsuming, with each new advance in understanding including within itself the essentials of the previous stage.
I am partial to liberal political approaches, taking on a post-woke perspective ( as opposed to the pre-woke perspectives of conservatives and MAGA). Post-woke means I have assimilated the philosophical underpinnings that ground wokism, but move beyond its moralistic blame and finger-pointing. I view my perspective as subsuming the essentials of wokism, and see the progressivism out of which it emerged as subsuming the essentials of conservatism-libertarianism. And I see conservatism ( the socially moderate variety represented by National Review , now called RHINOS) as subsuming the essentials of MAGA. That means that of this whole developmental spectrum of political thought, MAGA is the least well-equipped to make sense of alternative ways of thinking and post-wokism is the best equipped to do so. But if this is the case, then why does it appear that conservatives can model what liberals think better than liberals can model what conservatives think? After all, if liberalism subsumes the essentials of conservatism and goes beyond it, then conservatism should be quite familiar to liberals.
Let me suggest that the issue is less that of understanding conservative positions than it is of not getting why conservatives would want to hold onto what liberals see as outdated, anachronistic, regressive thinking. It would be like visiting with a group of ultra-orthodox jews or an amish community and finding their ways quaintly familiar, a return to an older and simpler time and belief system. But at the same time, there might be puzzlement as to why these people would want to hold onto a worldview that appears from a modern vantage as unenlightened concerning important aspects of how to get along with others without the need to repress difference.
I get along well with my MAGA acquaintances. I understand well where they are coming from, and have no need to condemn them from a moral perspective. But they dont strike me as very adaptive in their ability to connect with others unlike themselves, to skillfully see the world from the others point of view. I have to walk on tiptoe not to say or do the wrong thing. In this way there is a superficial resemblance to the hypersensitivity of wokism, but in the later, the finger-pointing moralism reflects a lack of empathy for those who arent able to live up to high standards of mutual understanding and acceptance of difference. In the former, the standards of human conduct are much lower; humans are seen as basically fortresses of selfishness. The healthy social sphere is expected to be dominated more by zero-sum competition and rivalry than by cooperation, which is to be approached with suspicion and cynicism.
No, it's been building for some time, but it may end with him or his successor.
Quoting Athena
Understanding isn't difficult. Which 'we' is it that wants to, and is willing to make the hazardous and arduous effort to resolve it? Trump still has a 42% (!!wtf?!!) approval rating.
Quoting Athena
yes. I wonder which way the armed forces will choose when (not if) it comes to the point.
You're straw-manning. As I was saying - the two groups were made up of Libertarians, so why would there be a problem in two groups of 100 Libertarians each merging together? If they all share the same mindset of "live and let live", then what is the problem? There is none. The problem arises when others in the group abandon Libertarianism in favor of living how they want but imposing their standards on others. In a society of "Live and Let Live" no one's rights will ever be infringed upon.
The issues you speak of are the problems if an authoritarian society (either communist, fascist or theocracy) where you attempt to force everyone to think the same way. Libertarianism is far less dependent on people thinking the same as everyone can have different means and methods of obtaining happiness - only as long as those means and methods do not infringe on anyone else's goals. In this type of society everyone gets more of what they want, even if it differs, without fear of oppression.
Quoting Vera Mont
If I can't know millions then that means I never interact with millions, only the 100 I am a part of.
Over 70 million shared a common interest that either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump should be president of the U.S., millions of people are part of political parties that share common interests, so you claim that 1 million people share very little is bogus. In a democracy, it seems to me all that matters is what the majority wants. If what you said were true then all elections could never be decided because too many people think differently - there would never be a majority vote for one candidate. What you're saying just does not fit with reality.
Quoting Vera Mont
Maybe it's your delivery. I have been able to get others to change their mind, or at least to consider other opinions and options as valid. It certainly helps that the other person is open-minded and intellectually honest. For those that aren't that is what your voice and vote are for - to reach other open-minded and intellectually honest people in an effort to help them see the ever-growing danger of a two-party political system ruled by elites that keep expanding their power while manipulating their constituents to demonize any opposition in an effort to close their minds to listening to and considering anything other than what the Party says.
I knew I wouldn't have to go far (your post right above your reply to me) to find you contradicting yourself:
Quoting Athena
:roll:
Labels is what the left is all about with their focus on racial and gender identities. The right is focused on religious identities. Libertarians could care less about labels and identities - other than authoritarian and liberal - the main gist of what I've been saying recently is that the term "liberal" is being misused, and to correct that.
Quoting Athena
No it's not. Democracy is based on the idea of majority rule and the minority has to suck it up. A democracy only works when the citizens are educated and informed, which most of the U.S. citizenry is not. Most Americans live in political bubbles formed by listening sources that only affirm what they think and don't bother exposing themselves to new ideas (because that would be heresy).
Quoting Athena
You first.
Whatever happened to interactions like this:
(sorry for the video quality. it's old)
It's funny watching the Rep and Dem trying to interrupt Stewart to get their talking points in. They aren't interested in discussion. They are only interested in being "part of their [party's] strategies", as Stewart put it. The part that is "hurting America" as Stewart put it is the inability to see the person on the other side as a person and trying to understand where they are coming from and why they believe what they do. Only then will you be able to find common ground and compromise.
There wouldn't be. The problem emerges when you discover that not all people are Libertarian.
If everyone were a dedicated environmentally conscientious, compassionate, vegetarian socialist, I would have no problem, either.
Quoting Harry Hindu
(You left out capitalist.) They invariably do, and quite successfully.
That statement is bogus. All those people did not share those opinions. They chose the agenda that they thought more closely aligned with their own interests. Many were wrong in their assessment; many are now regretting their choice. I fully agree that those two options were insufficient to cover all the issues and concerns of the population, and that the system needs a serious reformation. I do not believe that yours could cope with the the reality of where the US is at this moment in history.
Quoting Harry Hindu
They invariably and inevitably do. Not to mention the logistical difficulty arising from hundreds or thousands attempting to build roads and bridges all their own, any place they liked. All those unfinished projects would waste a lot of resources and clutter up the landscape.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You may have persuaded some of your peers to consider this option, but I'm not aware of the actual functioning society you established thereby. I considered it intensively in the late 1960's. Sounded good, superficially; could not bear scrutiny.
There are plenty of men who understand why women place such a high priority on reproductive freedom. This man,
Quoting Brendan Golledge
is not one of them. His posts are garbage. If he keeps up in this vein, he'll be banned. Good riddance. Do we really need more misogynists?
I think that most people are Libertarians. They just don't know it because they've been conned by the two-party system into believing that the other side is trying to take your freedoms away. This is the fear-mongering that both sides propagate. They don't scare people into voting for them because the other side wants you to be more free. They are scaring you into believing that the other side wants to take away your freedoms. not the other way around, which is evidence that most people are Libertarian-minded.
Quoting Vera Mont
I have a feeling that many would regret their choice no matter who ended up being president, given our (only two) choices. Mine is not a coping mechanism for reality as it is. It is the idea that we need to change reality as it is by abolishing political parties. Being that the two-party system is the status-quo, and continued support would be considered "conservative" in nature rather than "progressive".
Quoting Vera Mont
"Live and let live" does not necessarily mean Libertarians do not work together to better the lives for themselves. This is a typical straw-man argument against Libertarianism.
That would be the idea, which obviously US Presidents and especially Donald Trump doesn't understand with his "executive orders".
Quoting Harry Hindu
Even in a multiparty system this happens. Imagine a Parliament that would some day just declare: "Got it! All laws that we need have been done. We'll go home now, call us if we are needed." :wink:
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'm not sure if libertarians themselves see it like that.
..a precedence that has been established since the country's founding and expanded upon by both parties.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/executive-orders
Quoting ssu
I'm not talking about multiparty either. I'm talking about NO parties.
"However political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
-George Washington (the only U.S. President to not be a member of a political party)
Not many laws are needed in a limited government - just an independently monitored police and defense force and a judiciary with term limits to interpret the laws, and a "head of state" for international representation.
Quoting ssu
I would have to question whether they are actually Libertarian or not. The more they agree with what is outside of the Libertarian box, the less Libertarian they are, and more authoritarian they are, by definition. If we don't have clear definitions then we risk talking past each other.
Trump is a good Christian. :grin: We should all live by faith and stop attempting to reason. Leave everything up to God and Trump. All we need do is obey.
That is a culture change following the change in education. We changed how we teach young minds to work. They are no longer prepared for good reasoning.
Does anyone else object to the monetary changes in college football? The media is very much part of this problem, making a big deal out of ball games and totally ignoring high school and college debates. Indeed, today, high schools have ball games but not debate teams.
Democracy has nothing to do with football, but debating is essential to democracy. I want a Statue of Liberty put in schools to remind us of what debating and good reasoning have to do with our liberty and justice. Football is a substitute for war. Winners and losers. You are wrong and I am right. Dominate or serve. God of Abraham religions are divisive, not inclusive. This is a cultural problem.
Here is the worst problem! Trump is getting rid of all those who do not salute him and march with his agenda. In the past, when a king died, that was the end of him. Modern bureaucracy does not die with the leader. Trump is not all wrong in his efforts to disrupt that bureaucratic reality. But by replacing the old regime with his regime, he may not be giving us a better reality, and his control of military men in controlling positions is a threat to the democracy we inherited, especially because we stopped defending that democracy in the classroom.
:rofl:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Most people are tribal to some degree.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The two-party system is American. Most other nations have several parties represented in their legislatures, so that minority voices are also heard - indeed, if one of the largest parties does not get a clear majority, their administration depends on support from the minor ones.
(Please don't tell other people what they know or think!)
Quoting Harry Hindu
You have my blessing to do that.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The operative word there is bold. They might beable to, sometimes, if a competent leader is acknowledged by all participants and they are all equally willing to do their part. But in order for that that to happen with any reliable frequency, the people involved would have to be very much in agreement about all kinds of fundamental things. What you have in your little coloured chart is aparty platform, not a formula for most people's actual lives. Once a political party gains power, it's not eager to cede to any other organizing entity.
But not of his regime: there was usually a recognized successor to carry on. Otherwise, bloody civil war. That, I'm afraid, is what will happen in the disunited states of America.
Quoting Athena
Yes, he is. He and his henchmen are disrupting exactly those departments that have done the best job. A whole lot of people will suffer for a long time as a result.
Quoting Athena
Top brass. Not all the men and women who obey the top brass - or refuse to. My feeling is that armed forces will split along ideological and/or ethical lines (Remember, they swore to uphold the constitution.) Civil War reboot.
Oh crap. I am sorry, but I have lost patience.
On the light side, after one of my letters to the editor was published, I was invited to join a group of mostly men who had lunch together while someone presented an issue of interest, and everyone discussed it. That was before the internet, and I was intellectually. starving, so I was thrilled to join. :lol:
These guys had served in WWII and they were sexist, Christian conservatives. Originally, they called their club the John Birch Society.
When I joined, they called themselves the Cicero Society, and they eventually included their wives in the meetings. To my horror, their wives were like little dependent girls. My point is, it took me a while to understand I was not one of them! :lol: OMG I was not one of them. Neither was the Jew who had been a long-standing member, and that means I was not the only one with a different point of view. The dear man who read my letter to the editor assumed I was conservative.
Frankly, this lift-right thing baffles me. I so much wish people would give up their imagined left-right thinking. I most certainly am not a conservative, but have old-fashioned values regarding what democracy is and what our civic responsibilities are, based on the philosophy of pagans. Stop creating a false notion of reality by labeling people. Talk about the issues. Not the football teams.
Satan is a reality because people make that so. :brow: When we make up boogie men, we are not dealing with the reality and developing a consensus.
All people are tribal. That is becoming more obvious every day. We are social animals and have a need to belong, and that leads us to conform to the ideals of others so we are accepted, and consequently also define who is not one of us. That was the main focus of the Nazis and today is the main focus of Trumps agenda. Hating those who are not one of us is important to this agenda. Hmm, that could make a good thread. How do we come to grips with being one of us and not one of them? who defines the agendas that separate us?
In this thread, people are working hard to prove that people can be categorized as one of us or one of them.
If someone identifies as MAGA, you have a very good idea of what they're about: anti-vax, stolen election, climate change denialism, cultish adoration of Trump, xenophobia, etc. Hillary was right about these people being deplorable, but wrong about their numbers- They're all deplorable cult members who cheer Trump's cruelty. Maybe some are "fine people", but I haven't met one yet.
A good - that is, well functioning - society does not require compliance and conformity, but rather a consensus on matters of common interest. Belonging to a community does not entail rejection of other communities, unless there is a strong motive to do so, such as conflict over water and territory. Pre-European societies did a lot more trading and intermarrying than fighting. Even if you fight with another tribe, you're not required to hate its members: you can respect an enemy and become trading partners or allies after peace is made. ( see Haudenosaunee Confederacy)
The modern version, both in so-called advanced societies and former European colonies, is a bastardized form of tribalism, brought about by artificial divisions within a larger polity. Quoting Athena
I don't see a hard work here. A social conservative does not necessarily align with the platform of a political party that calls itself Conservative (like the odious Polievre, who wants to conserve all the wrong things, like plastic straws), but in an all-pervasive capitalistic culture, a conservative outlook is assumed to be pro-business and anti-welfare. A person who calls himself Christian and behaves in ways that would make Jesus weep can be classified, but not as a Christian.
We cannot know millions of people as individuals and judge them each according to their degree of Trumpism or whatever. So we categorize people according to how their words and actions compare with our own mind-set, expectations and aspirations.
How many people have any understanding of the Constitution? I don't know of anyone who listened to defend the Constitution. Our young enlist for adventure or because they were supercharged by emotions when they believed the US was attacked. Tribal us against them thinking.
Some see the military as their best chance to get out of poverty and climb the ladder to the top. Our schools have not prepared our young for democracy and defending the constitution since 1958, when civics and debate teams were dropped from school budgets in favor of classes required by the MIC and therefore funded by the federal government.
Decisions are more apt to depend on personal interest than on ideals. They will follow charismatic leaders like so many followed Hitler.
Of what good is that consensus if there isn't a human instinct to conform?
I have the impression that defending the viewpoint of people of color can be a serious social and financial problem in the South. That fact is what we call culture.
I love the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and they were culturally very different from the Apache and the Hopi. I think the Haudenosaunee Confederacy played a strong role in the manifestation of our present democracy. United but also having sovereignty.
About proving if someone is one of us or one of them, DNA testing works well. :lol: I think what is happening here is manifesting myths that justify behaviors. My DNA test will prove if I am a conservative or a liberal. These labels are not facts, like a train coming to a crossing, is a fact. Drop the mythology of us and them and get to the issues that matter. :confused: My words fail me. I am not mentally and linguistically prepared to convey the concepts of peace; however, I am quite sure peace is more likely without the make-believe notions of us and them. We are all in this together. Let us not make a war by creating the notions of us and them. Facts matter, and we need to work together on what the facts are and why they matter. Life is not a football game. At least some of us think being a football fanatic is ridiculous.
I do not need to know you. I need to respect you no matter what. I need to respect you and protect your dignity, and I must do everything with integrity. Ancient Greek morality- to know the law (universal law, logos) and good manners.
*They bled the infants: blues on top, reds on the bottom.* Qualifications rarely came into monarch selection. In Hungary in the middle ages, the nobility elected kings from among their number. Still hereditary, but it didn't reward incompetence or mental instability. (Now, of course, it's reversed.)
Another way, of course, is conquest. Whoever leads a successful invasion is king, and so is his son - or, if needs must, daughter, since bloodline is more important than gender. (Not everywhere)
Quoting Vera Mont
War and bureaucracy can co-exist. In fact, bureaucracy tends to increase before and during warfare.
Monarchs also needed civil servants to keep track of logistics and finances. Social services were left to the church... for what that was worth.
Quoting Athena
Reform would be good. Slash-and-burn tactics merely deform. It's easier to destroy things than to build them. Smashing the departments of education, health and housing will not end corruption. And of course, you costs will go up, not down.
Quoting Athena
I approve of very little that was established in the Red Menace years. Or, indeed, US foreign policy generally - with some bureaucratic exceptions, like USAID.
Quoting Athena
That's the worst case scenario, yes. (What I utterly fail to grasp is the charismatic leader.)
Self-interest; interdependence. The instinct is not to conform but to co-operate.
Quoting Athena
Words and actions are real enough. Anyone who screams at people instead of talking with them, who wants to take away other people's country, who buys foreign prisons for his countrymen, I characterize as as evil and categorize as enemy, regardless of what label he's stuck on himself. Quoting Athena
I save my respect for those who have not torn up and trampled on my values.
Not true because I am not playing that game. I am not paying attention to the mythology of left and right. Those divisions never held any meaning for me. I have explained why I think these mythologies are preventing us from having better reasoning.
I have friends who are good people and also Trump supporters. I also had Palestinian friends and feel terrible about what Zionists have done to Palestine. There are people of color in my family. When the school was teaching us about our families coming from Europe, I was told to ask my parents what I am. My mother was irate and she said, "You are American, 57 varieties. It goes with being told to look for God in everyone and believing that respecting others is about our character, not about who the other is.
Instead of making up stories about who they are, perhaps we should all pay attention to our own understanding of virtues and character.
What game? In a Venn Diagram, MAGA and Democrat will have a tiny bit of overlap. Maybe. The rest of their beliefs will be night and day with each other. Are you disputing this? Do you think there are MAGA out there who are climate warriors? Democrats who want to "drill-baby-drill"? Democrats who want to round up and deport illegals without due process? Democrats who like Trump and MAGA who can't stand him? Qanon Democrats? Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson Democrats?
I will try this again:
Do we want to believe there is no difference between the past and present bureaucracies? How about this, our new real identity cards are no different from our old ones, and Social Security numbers have nothing to do with war and tracking people in a way that was never done before, except in Germany.
Or do we want to believe the US could not have a Social Security system and other social need bureaucracies without also adopting the German model of bureaucracy?
Quoting Vera Mont
Is that equal to how we select people for different jobs? Has the belief system possibly changed, changing the power of those in authority? How are people judged in the past and present?
Quoting Vera Mont Remember the explanation of the US system of checks and balances. Our forefathers were very leery about giving anyone too much power and they created a form of government that limits power. However, the Bible is about kings and a God who stands with the king, and in 2025, ministers on TV are telling us Trump is strong because God stands with him. Since leaving moral training to the church, we are living with the old world mentality of a controlling God and kings. I am afraid we are not going to resolve this problem until we realize what education has to do with having a democracy. Bush gave us a war on evil and we internalized the evil. Some think it is the right, and others think it is the left. Form! a democracy or a king? A Military Industrial Complex or a nation we can be proud of?
Here is an opinion of USAID that justifies closing it down.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5266753-usaid-macedonia-political-crisis/
I may not believe it has merit, but I saw a public broadcasting program that alarms me. I listened to a man known for his international charity work, and he also commented about the errors of USAID and how things can be done better. I don't think we can be a Military Industrial Complex and be the nation we want.
Quoting Vera Mont
You might like the book "Empire of Illusion- The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" by Chris Hedges. I never imagined this man would become the president of our country.
I am not disputing what you say. I am not paying attention to the bull shit. Why do you think MAGA and the illusion of the day is more important than the Military Industrial Complex that is behind what happens? Why does everyone ignore Eisenhower's warning? We are all limited in time and energy, and just don't have the time and energy for today's wars of illusion. It is a divisive distraction.
I do not want to be identified as us or them. :grin: If I must be identified as a member of a group, how about the group that takes Eisenhower's warning seriously and believes the 1958 National Defense Education Act, along with adopting the German model of bureaucracy, turned us into what we defended our democracy against.
I am not a fan of Kennedy, but this message opens me to wanting to know him better.
This explanation of John Kennedy is interesting to me.
By the way, one of my friends who likes Trump is right about the good reasons for Trump's actions. The president is supposed to control the CIA but it has acted independently of the president and lied about this. I will say it again, Trump is not totally wrong and I can believe the CIA killed John Kennedy.
I believe that If Kucinich had won against Bush Jr. the world would be a better place. Kucinich would have focused on grief following 911 and used this time to improve our global relationships. Whereas Bush and the Neocons took us on the Military Industrial Complex path, which has much of the world in a state of war or nearing war. Kucinich's philosophy was for peace. Instead of peace, we have the Neocon tension of world domination through military might.
I guess that is fitting to say in a thread about our morality.
Some people talk about fairies as though they are as real as butterflies and deer. Does that make fairies and unicorns real? Philosophy covers this but I forget the explanation. Actions, however, deal with reality.
Now, are we to believe all the hateful things a White Supremacist believes to be true of people of color? How is that different from the words of hate flying between the left and right?
When it comes to respect, either we are respectful people or we are not, because what we say and what we do depends on who we are, not the other person. From experience, I know it can be extremely hard to be respectful of some people, and many times I am ashamed of myself for falling below my better judgment. I do not think Trump in the WrestleMania show is behaving like someone I can respect, but if I am disrespectful, I am disrespectful. That is not a good thing. I can not blame others for my bad behavior.
But here is a heart-warming memory. Because I make an effort to be respectful to everyone, several homeless men who lived in my neighborhood thought we were good friends. When they apprcoched me they would be on their best behavior, and when college grants came available, some of them showed me their efforts to get into college. I am not Christian, but surely when we are good to others, we can bring out the best in them. I think that is the work of Jesus and I wish more people engaged in this small consideration of others.
In nazi Germany respect was earned that justified disrespecting and dehumanizing others. Please, not in America. Quakers were important moral national leaders.
Much as I respect the Huxleys, that's total bilge. Had he never heard of Caligula or Ivan the Terrible?
Quoting Athena
Which past? Which present? Which places? It's not a question of wanting to believe: the fact is, some kind of civil service has existed since the advent of city states. They are necessary to the running of a nation. If that nation is compassionate enough to take care of the weak, the sick, the needy, the old and the children, more civil service is required, because, frankly, the churches made a dog's breakfast of social services. Big, diverse societies need more bureaucracy than monarchies by divine right, that's true - but fewer people are killed at the whim of their liege or starve to death in a severe winter.
You know there have been some pretty good kings, just as there have been pretty good presidents and prime ministers.
Quoting Athena
Which past? Which present? Which places? Hereditary rule is most obviously not equal to democratic elections. Different jobs have different selection processes. People are judged, as they have always been, by their peers for civic responsibility, by their spouses for compatibility and fidelity, by their employers for job performance, by their congregation for piety, by their regiments for bravery and discipline, by law enforcement for adherence or infraction. How is any of this relevant to the moral divide?
Quoting Athena
They're dead. They don't get a say anymore.
Quoting Athena
Everywhere humans operate, mistakes are made and things could be done better. Everything can be corrupted. Shutting off all aid doesn't end corruption or profiteering; just moves it to another agency. Reform, yes. Indiscriminate woodchipper, no.
Quoting Athena
I used to be familiar with Hedges - liked his commentary in Bush times. How American politics have devolved since then was somewhat predictable, no matter how we wished it were unthinkable.
Quoting Athena
You mean the Kennedy mutant who makes up his own version of science? Concerned about food additives, but not about the wholesale firing of food safety inspectors? Doing yet another study on autism and vaccines, but okay with terminating research projects? Ugh!
Quoting Athena
I'm not. A feeling is not a behaviour; it's neither good nor bad until you act on it. I respect or despise or condemn on the basis of what the other person does. I cannot respect sleaze, cruelty, dishonesty, meanness or evil. Sorry!
Quoting Athena
The words are real, whether true or not. Yes, I categorize those who speak untruth as liars. What someone says about fairies and unicorns does not affect the unreality of fairies or unicorns, but it does show that person to be a fantasist, and that is how I categorize them.
Quoting Athena
Words are real, whether true or untrue. As to differentiating left rhetoric from right, you need to listen a little more closely to the actual words. They're not the same on both sides.
Quoting Athena
Words signal, incite and precede actions. They can do quite a lot of harm even before the actions are taken. Trump and Vance told us what they were going to do, and a great many people didn't believe they'd actually do it. They did more and worse. Hate speech consists of words, as do slander, racial slurs, verbal abuse and propaganda.
Totally agree. Education needs a major overhaul with mandatory classes in critical thinking and administration.
Quoting Vera Mont
Sure - the people that are weak-minded and look to others to confirm their own beliefs, and if they don't then they need to force them confirm their beliefs.
Quoting Vera Mont
I'm not. Only socialists and theocrats tell others what to think.
The smallest minority is the individual. If you are part of a group then you think what the group thinks. Now that may be your choice to join a group that shares your ideas, but what about when others join the group that do not necessarily share all of your ideas? The same problem that you raise regarding Libertarians and interacting with others applies to all groups.
In joining a group, you always run the risk of the group not sharing all of your ideas. You, and only you, can only accurately represent yourself.
Quoting Vera Mont
Sure. In this thread we are talking about politics which is a very broad range of ideas. Individuals can join other types of groups, like a company, or a team, that have much more specific goals in mind - where other differences do not come into play and are completely irrelevant to the purpose of the group. The same cannot be said of political groups.
Quoting Athena
Exactly. This is what I've been telling Vera Mont. These political groups manipulate individuals into joining their group, using all the Libertarian buzz-words of "liberal", "choice", "freedom", etc. to get others to join only for these people to realize that are only for freedom and choice for themselves and not others.
Quoting Athena
I don't expect communists and fascists to give up their left-right thinking. I do expect intellectually honest and open-minded people that are part of a political party to wake up and realize they've been conned into supporting left and right authoritarian policies for fear of the other side taking away their freedoms.
In fact, we seem to have some very notions of what things mean.
Quoting Harry Hindu
BS
Quoting Harry Hindu
You're born into a group whether you like it or not. Could nos survive without the group until you reach at least puberty - by when you belong to several groups, either by choice or circumstance. All this individualist nonsense is wishful at best, disingenuous at worst.
You do not believe that there are people that have joined groups for the wrong reasons, or were duped into joining a group because of the way the group falsely portrayed themselves?
Besides, I'm telling people what they think. I'm asking them to think differently about their political parties they are a member of.
Quoting Vera Mont
Then why join a group?
Quoting Vera Mont
You still don't understand. Libertarians are fine with joining groups that promote their individual freedom - like their right to live. You might ask who is using who here? Is the baby using its mother to promote it's own survival, or is the mother protecting its baby to ensure that her genes make it into the next generation? If both are achieving their goals without their goals infringing upon the other's rights, then what is the problem? The goals of the two might be different, but they are not necessarily opposing goals. They are different goals that promote the goals of the other rather than inhibit them.
And yes, individuals should belong to certain groups by choice - not by being lied to and conned into joining.
Military spending as a percent of GDP is quite low (2.7%), compared to when Ike gave that warning (7%). It's also a much lower percent of the budget.
Certainly. Gullibility is a major human trait.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Lots of reasons, both societal and individual. A common interest, such as rugby or landscape painting, strength of numbers for political activism or labour-management bargaining, country club for social climbing, team-building corporate board for financial advantage, book club for friendly discussion, fan club for celebrity gossip, car pool to save money and environment, PTA to track child's education, army for.... a number of idiotic and/or idealistic and/or economic reasons... In none of these groups are you expected - or able - to share the other members' views on any subject other than the purpose of the group.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Rights? Never mind infants' goals and rights - they haven't any, but may be protected by the governance, so that even if the mother's goal is to throw one into the sea, she is deprived of that right by society.
Groups of people may have a common goal, but even in families individual goals often conflict. In a larger society, there is no evidence that mutually beneficial goals are the norm rather than the exception.
You keep talking about 'rights' as if that were something conferred upon individuals by a supernatural entity. A right is nothing but a social concept about who is allowed to do what. Who has what rights and what obligations under a given regime is arrived-at by a generally held belief system, which in turn engenders their legal code. It seem you're a big fan of "property rights." (I sure don't have much respect for the current state of ownership!)
Various political philosophies have varying views on what can or should be owned, by whom, under what conditions. Whichever political philosophy prevails (determined by majority of numbers or coercive power) makes the rules and sets up the mechanisms of enforcement. Government and law. Infrastructure. Agencies.
Political parties are just groups that people join by choice to express their preference for the style of governance they want for their country. The members don't need to think similarly on any other subject but the issues of their platform. If most people were Libertarian, why did the party finish just below the Greens in popular vote.
Quoting Harry Hindu
And yet, people are ignorant, opinionated, kind, selfish, forgetful, ambitious, clever, mean, greedy, violent, co-operative, compliant, manipulative, generous, reckless... People do lie. And cheat. And steal. And fight. And kill one another. Nobody has a "right to live" - only the protection of a lawful society.
Then there is no reason to say because you are a man (which you did) as an explanation for something bad/wrong someone says?
Which is my simple point.
There are no actual baskets more than one person can fit in at a time. Its wrong to see whole human beings as fitting in some notion of maga or marxist or white.
Politics, like the state, by nature, treats people as citizens or voters or as some other small facet of what a whole human being actually is. We are wrong to buy into the propaganda that holds any individual out to be some mere member of some mere class or type.
Classes or types like maga can be useful shortcuts when speaking politics, but they are woefully inadequate to characterize an individual person.
Hating MAGA (if that means people who wear maga hats), like hating Mexicans (if that means people who are from Mexico), is not addressing any actual people, and only shows a lack of interest in actual people.
You only hate your own ideas when you hate whole groups of people for all being members of your idea of that group.
It's not like hating Mexicans. Being Mexican isn't a choice. It doesn't denote anything except the person is from Mexico. MAGA is a choice. It denotes a set of morally repugnant attitudes and beliefs.
Ok, so you can hate those attitudes and beliefs, but the people, they can still be loved and respected. Is that what you mean? Because that is what I mean.
The fact that someone votes for trump or against Harris, or for Harris or against Trump, or doesnt vote, or votes someone else - that can all be hated as repugnant if you so choose to look for repugnance or stupidity or ill-intent - but the individual people themselves, and their whole individual lives when they arent voting or arent saying what politics they are for and what they are against, the people are as good as any other people, right?
Or are you saying all good people should all hate every person who votes maga because maga as understood by good people, says enough to sum up each maga voting individual?
Not by anyone who is horrified by the brutality of the regime they support.
'Hate the sin, but love the sinner is for saints.' Those of us ordinary humans who suffer and witness the abuses of these sinners cannot love the perpetrators of those abuses.
No. MAGA is dangerous. It's a cancer on the body politic. Their vision of a 1950's utopia would roll back women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and civil rights. Their scapegoating of various groups is reminiscent of 1930's Germany. They even traffic in the same tropes: https://apnews.com/article/trump-hitler-poison-blood-history-f8c3ff512edd120252596a4743324352. Their leader is cruel and vindictive and they revel in it.
Even there I think in aggregate a smaller number on "the right" will have that issue (though, this is notwithstanding something like personal crisis (closeted right-wingers maybe)). It also may be the case that if two 'lefties' have obviously different moralities which are both well-reasoned and somewhat pitched on 'reality' then they are probably not both lefties. One might be, the other not. It seems highly unlikely both would be int he same vein, generally, but have specifically differing views.
That said, this also seems to be the case (on a less dramatic level) for those on the Right. A Charlie Kirk vs a Ken Hamm vs a black, gay conservative of some kind - they will have more in common that a trio of disparate lefties, I think as their general ethical outlook will align, allowing for only modest differences at the margins.
I also thikn "conformist" might be misleading. "Conformed" probably makes more sense to avoid the charge of being decidedly not well-developed, and simply towing a line.
Errr what civil/womens** rights are they trying to take?
**I am vehemently against the banning of abortions, but that is absolutely a conversation about two people's rights and which wins out, so not quite what I'm asking.
Abortion rights are women's rights.
https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/5265021-donald-trump-executive-orders-disparate-impact-civil-rights/
"President Trump has taken steps to nullify a key component to the Civil Rights Act as he works to remove diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government.
One of the executive orders issued Wednesday, dubbed Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy, would dismantle disparate impact liability a legal theory codified in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that holds agencies accountable for practices that have an outsized discriminatory effect on protected groups, even when there is no intent to discriminate."
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11268
"On January 21, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14173, entitled "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity." The executive order (EO) states as one of its purposes to enforce federal civil rights laws "for the benefit of all Americans." As part of the President's directive to "streamline[]" federal contracting and "require Federal contractors and subcontractors to comply with our civil-rights laws," EO 14173 revokes Executive Order 11246, entitled "Equal Employment Opportunity." EO 11246 is a long-standing executive order establishing antidiscrimination requirements for federal contractors and subcontractors and in the administration of federally assisted construction contracts.
Of your references:
1. That's good;
2. That is the opposite of your claim.
I can see why things are the way they are for you.
Your entire approach to this conversation has been nothing short of bonkers.
Quoting flannel jesus
Well, it's up to you to feel that way and fair enough, but that's not going to mean much given i've had three reviewers of my comments here (one from either side of the aisle and my wife. Additionally, your lack of understanding leads me to think "Fair enough, on those terms". I felt the same about yours before a thorough review prior to the last substantial reply to the one you're quoting.
Quoting flannel jesus
That is, in fact, what the entire exchange has been about. If you haven't noticed, that's preposterous.
The other three questions are patently ridiculous.
Quoting flannel jesus
No, but that's certainly an aspect. Otherwise the development wouldn't be along party lines. This is pretty simple.
Quoting flannel jesus
I'm not. Im answering questions about why the right seem more coherent, and well-developed. I think a well-developed morality can be a virtue, for what it's worth, and I hazard a guess you wouldn't disagree. So what the heck is this question doing?
Quoting flannel jesus
Nope. I've said it's clear to me. Quoting flannel jesus
I can't understand the basis for this question. I haven't suggested this, particularly. But I also challenge you to object, subnstantially, to the idea that a group morality is more developed when the group is, in aggregate, well-aligned (given some requisites about the views themselves). It is a hallmark.
Look, you clearly have an intense distrust and dislike for the right wing. Fine. I'm not a fan either. But If you're not going to engage in good faith here, I'll just leave it. These all seem like neat tricks to get out of the pool anyway, prima facie, to avoid perhaps allowing some positive language to be used about a group you dislike. Perhaps is just time to get out of the pool at any rate...
You start the paragraph with "I'm not" but end by confirming that you are.
Bonkers
Asking you to justify why right wing morality is "obviously more well developed" isn't about intense distrust or dislike. Someone saying left wing morality is "obviously more well developed" would need similar justification. You haven't justified it. The only thing you've said that comes close to a justification is that their mortalities are more similar to each other, closer to each other, than the myriad flavours of left wing morality. Conformist, or "conformed", morality isn't what most people mean by well developed, and philosophically it's clearly not a virtue. It's not a vice either, it's just nothing, it's meaningless. You can't judge the quality of a morality based on how conformist or not conformist it is.
Which is what I've already said and further to the point that political parties are not like these groups in that they hold many views on many issues, and if you disagree on any of them then you are a heretic. Political parties today are like if you are playing on one football team and you decide to shake hands with the member of the other team and wish them good luck, you are "canceled", or banned, from your team.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yet a vast majority of babies survive to adulthood regardless of which society you live in. How does that happen?
Quoting Vera Mont
Where did I ever imply such a thing? When you see the world through the prism of politics, it warps your view of reality.
Quoting Vera Mont
Again, nothing that contradicts what I have said. You are just reiterating what I have said.
I have said numerous times now that there should be a level playing field of competing ideas where logic is the only referee, and let the best idea win. My money would be on Libertarianism - with one bit of evidence being that you have yet to provide a logical, coherent argument against anything I have said or proposed, relying on straw-men and moving goal posts.
Quoting Vera Mont
Because Quoting Vera Mont. You seem incapable of putting the pieces together.
Another reason they lost is because there isn't a level playing field where logic is the referee.
And how does any of this contradict what I've said about people being able to freely choose which group they are a member of and that there are many people that are gullible to be conned into joining a group that misrepresents their positions on issues? For instance, Dems claim to be pro-choice only when it comes to abortion, but do not want you to have choice in pronouns to use. Reps claim to support economic freedom while at the same time supporting monopolies which leads to less competition, which leads to less choice, which leads to less freedom.
Quoting Vera Mont
The issue is defining what a lawful society looks like. Does a lawful society include authoritarianism?
What is your point?
When I speak of the Military Industrial Complex, I also speak of a change in education that has strong social, economic, and political ramifications. It is a cultural change that comes with major problems, such as a mass prepared to be followers instead of prepared to be leaders who feel responsible. The conservatives are more apt to have a weak sense of responsibility with a high reliance on God. They read their Bible and may ignore science because science may be the word of Satan. :roll: And if the minister tells them Trump is strong because God is with him, they vote for the person they believe stands with God. There is an ugly "us against them" thing going on here. In the past, Jews were the victims, and today, Muslims and immigrants are the victims.
Bottom line for me is education and culture, not how we spend money.
Who came to that conclusion, on what basis? Heresy is a religious term, not a political one - no matter how badly people these days abuse the meaning of words.
Recently - as in the last 25 or so years, we have seen the Republican party push out moderate conservatives as it was increasingly taken over by the hard right, which has been courting the racist and fundamentalist vote since Nixon's last campaign, and more recently, the misogynist vote. I didn't see that happen with the Democratic party, the Green party or the Libertarian party (granted, the last two are pretty obscure; not many blips on the radar, except in that more greens are female and most libertarians are male.) If you disagree with the party platform, you can quit participating, change parties or go independent. Unless you're a big noise, nobody cares which you do.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Because no societies are libertarian. Most societies provide some kind of support for one another and some protection for the children. Not all, but most.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Oh yes? Have you recruited Logos for the refereeing job, or are you planning to stand in for him? Can you cite a single year in human history when a society had perfect equality of rights and opportunity? Should is just wishful thinking. As long as you respect 'property rights' and vote against taxation, you're working against any possibility of a level anything. (I hate the playing field analogy! People living on the street and people fleeing from bombs are not engaged in a game. But I would like to see all the CEO's and venture capitalists in America stripped down to their underwear, running a marathon. On a level road, obviously. Winner gets back one of his houses - as soon as everybody who wasn't allowed in the race gets one. )
Quoting Harry Hindu
There is a reason human affairs are in pieces: humans break things. Of course I can't put them together again. Neither can you.
(Somehow, with all the reiteration, you never got 'round to answering my question about the origin of 'rights'. It's okay, though, I think we've sufficiently covered your position.)
And thats why we will always make war, always victimize, always feel victimized - because all of us are perpetrators of abuse, and none of us are saints.
Its the feeling Im better than them, and they are lower than me that is the problem, the abuse.
Saying all 40 million MAGA hat wearers are sub-human is abuse, same as any oppressor abuses.
Humble respect for fellow human beings - one and all.
The only sinner we can know is a sinner is our self. Judge not, lest you bring condemnation on yourself.
There are MAGA and BLM marxists who sit at my table, together, in my family, loving each other. All ordinary humans. They get along because they dont judge the whole soul and body of each other based on some stupid, temporary, political opinion. They dont overlook all of the broad ways they are lovable despite narrow political views.
We need to have hope, not just criticism, in our conversations. People, all of us, should have more hope for each other.
Did you spend a lot of time talking with a lot of people who call themselves maga? Or do you know maga from the news and media?
You really might want to spend some time with a person before you judge that individual, particularly if you want to judge that person to be cancer.
I get it - there is no need to think kindly of Naziism, and any Nazis are bad. But unless we are ready to line up all the Nazis and kill them all, we have to talk with them. And if we have to talk with them we need to hope we can convince them to change and renounce the evil that is Naziism. The only way to have that conversation is to believe a Nazi is actually, somewhere in there, a whole human being, who can change his views and make amends for wrong-doing, and see the light we good people see.
Otherwise, it sounds like you just want to kill all MAGA people (like a Nazi does to its opponents).
I enjoy agreement. It helps me feel like I am not alone in the struggle to save the democracy we inherited. I am struggling for words to raise consciousness of what the Military Industrial Complex has done to our culture.
How can there be people with good moral judgment if none are educated for that? Education for good moral judgement is not reading the Bible. It may include reading the Bible and every other holy book and the classics, but this isn't just about learning what others have said. It is also how we learn to think things through. We used the Conceptual Thinking Method, and we replaced that with "Group Think" and education for technology. The result is totally different cultures.
Education is like a genie in a bottle. The defined purpose is the wish, and the students are the genie. We changed that wish in 1958, and we are now what we defended our democracy against. We have had education for the Military Industrial Complex since 1958. That is what we defended our democracy against. Compare thinking about how to make the most powerful engine or the tallest building, with thinking about Homer and the Odyssey and the rest of the classics. Education for technology is not about the humanities.
There is an important difference between education for independent thinking or education for "groupthink". If you can, watch and compare the original Star Trek and The Next Generation. That TV series marks the point in time when we had a cultural shift. Captain Kirk was the John Wayne of outer space. Captain Picard is the "groupthink" shift.
The US did not have the bureaucratic capacity to have something like the Social Security bureaucracy we have today until Roosevelt and Hoover made this possible. Together, they gave us big government with new powers.
Our advances in greater bureaucratic powers did not stop there, but waited until technological developments made the new Real ID card possible. Our present-day military capabilities had to wait for satellites. Today, our modern, high-tech military needs our money more than it needs our sons and daughters. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act uses schools to collect students' data, their names, and addresses. This is not the world of Genghis Khan, Caligula of Ivan the Terrible.
That's not the cause of war.
Quoting Fire Ologist
No; it's mostly about wanting their stuff, their land, their water, their gold, their labour - or all of those. The better-than idea is just one of the excuses for taking what you want.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Hardly akin to throwing them all in jail. Anyway, I never said that. They are, alas, all too human! Because of what they want, they're ready to buy the better-than bullshit. It gives them permission to act on their basest instinct. We all have those instincts, but usually keep them in check. When a large number are empowered by what they accept as a strong leader (even if he's just a lard-assed grifter or seminary dropout with an axe to grind) they become willing to consent to, then support, then perpetrate atrocities. Yes, some people do behave better than others, and I respect the good actors, not the bad.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Tell them! I'm not calling all Hispanic people criminals and pet-eaters, firing people for gender identity, depriving them of health care. (I'm not much worried about any god's judgment of me based on my opinion of bullies.)
Quoting Fire Ologist
That's what Kamala Harris tried to tell them.
Quoting Athena
Or Huxley, who was talking about a past that didn't happen, not the future of America.
Them. They.
Calling all Hispanic people criminals (which no one ever said) is as wrong as calling all MAGA racist (which a lot of people say).
Both statements allow one to ignore the details of actual issues, and peoples lives.
They are all ...
No they are not.
Too many politicians think we need a they in order to attract our votes. Most people seem to love this. I dont.
When will we truly wake up from our caves and clans?
If liberals were truly tolerant and inclusive, liberals could subsume the conservative principles and form a larger consensus. That is how America was formed. But liberals today are like everyone else - intolerant, hateful, deplorable, bigoted, paranoid, prideful, arrogant, ignorant - people.
bang on. Any group adherence will lead to this.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes, they are.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Except Trump, whom the MAGA crowd adulates. If they don't agree with him, they shouldn't have voted for him.Quoting Fire Ologist
There is no all-inclusive "we". We don't all ... anything.
Please quote where he's said "All Mexicans are criminal". Would be good to see. As far as I know, even when he's been misconstrued (usually purposefully, as in the Charlottesville rally) he's then clarified.
Sorry, my bad. Yes, the sweet man has allowed for some exceptions,
What he's saying is essentially true, no? What the government knows about is the criminals. Aside from that, the drug trade across the southern border is no controversy, i wouldn't think. I can't quite grasp why that passage is a problem, other than it being quite clumsy (because Trump isn't fit for this type of position..clearly).
no
Quoting AmadeusD
The drug trade doesn't consist of migrants who just want a better life for their kids. They were not expecting the cages.
Quoting AmadeusD
Pity!
It is. See?
Quoting Vera Mont
This is almost zero to do with what I've said. Could you maybe address it? The drug trade across the border is not controversial. Nor (this was the ball I hid) is stemming it, by whatever means).
As to "migrants", you're being disingenuous. "Illegal migrants" is the correct term. They are criminals, no matter how we may feel for them. They broke an extremely important law regarding national sovereignty. A very good example of this type of disingenuousness is hte 'wrongly deported" https://nypost.com/2025/04/29/us-news/kilmar-abrego-garcia-accused-of-being-gang-banger-in-2018-court-docs/ he and his wife were purported gang members, and he appears to have a history of domestic violence. Given he was here illegally, what's the issue there, other than weepy nonsense designed to do nothin gbut make one feel virtuous in the face of contrary evidence?
What's the problem, fundamentally? We can discuss cages later... and lay them at Obama's feet.
Religion and politics have been intimately entwined since humans starting governing each other. I don't have the time or patience to give you a history lesson here. What is a religion vs a government? They are both types of Big Brother. An atheist-leftist simply swapped one Big Brother for another.
Quoting Vera Mont
So you're saying that mothers need laws to protect their children? Are you saying that you need laws to behave and treat others with respect?
Quoting Vera Mont
Ok, then your argument is to just support the status quo. And you call yourself "progressive"?
Quoting Vera Mont
Yet, somehow we've made progress in our exploration and understanding of the universe and of ourselves as outcomes of natural processes instead of supernatural ones - all of which only happened after the Enlightenment where the focus on individual rights as opposed to the power of the government was realized and humanity began to shake off the bindings religion and authoritarian regimes have placed on us.
The current state of the military industrial complex did not come about randomly, out of the blue. When our only options for representation in government are generals and lawyers, what do you expect to happen?
Quoting AthenaThe Bible and other holy books are not what we should be looking to for moral guidance. They would be more in the domain of historical fictional stories. Any similarities between the moral teachings of different religions is an outcome of human nature and natural selection, not some supernatural entity. Ever read "The Selfish Gene", which is ironically more about how altruism evolved as a means to compete against selfishness? Selfishness and altruism do not necessary have to be at odds. If we are not at least somewhat selfish, how can we as individuals be altruistic if we do not focus on maintaining our own health and sanity?
Quoting Athena
I don't see much of a cultural difference between TOS and TNG. I do see a huge cultural difference between the Federation (everyone is free to live and let live) and the Borg (group-think).
The Klingons and Cardassians would be like 24th century fascists, the Borg 24th century communists and the Federation 24th century Libertarians. Notice how there are no political parties in the Federation. :wink:
Please explain.
:lol: I know that one very well. Like many women in my cohort, we made ourselves extensions of our husband's and children's desires. Unfortunately, that was often, if not always, a bad decision. It sure did not help to turn to a male Mormon for canceling! I know a little about being crazy. :scream:
[quote=Quoting Harry Hindu
I do not know what you mean by TOS and TNG. However, I do know the difference between the Federation and the Borg. Is it possible for you to watch and compare the original Star Trek with the Next Generation? The Next Generation was not the Borg, but there is a glaring difference between Kirk and his crew and Picard and his crew. I am reminded of 1830 and Tocqueville's "Democracy in America, and his explanation of the milder despot we would live under. That would be the Next Generation difference and turn away from the John Wayne role model of masculinity.
I am not into the libertarians. I do not like labels. But if we include Tocqueville in this discussion, I have an uncomfortable feeling that Trump is not all wrong. If we rely on government for everything, it owns us instead of us holding the power and having self-government. Morally, I am not clear about the morality of a nanny state. On the other hand, I am wondering what in hell is Trump doing making economic decisions instead of leaving them up to the business people. That is a whole different thread. Since when did our government become so involved with Industry and economic decisions. With Trump taking this a step further, with all the power being in his hands. :gasp: Tocqueville said Christian democracies would become despots.
Despot- a ruler or other person who holds absolute power, typically one who exercises it cruelly or oppressively. That seems to describe Trump. He came to power through the church and ministers, telling us his strength proves he stands with God. What is the morality this thread is talking about?
Your responses tell me you're not engaging with the arguments. I've laid them our clearly. If you;'re not convinced. So be it.
Quoting flannel jesus
I didn't. I addressed this directly. I'm simply giving this as an example of why the first response. This isn't going to be helpful for either of us...
No.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. I mostly call myself a socialist, but I do support policies that improve people's lives and reduce injustice. Progress is temporary; everything we build with long, laborious effort is regularly torn down by regressives. Wrecking is faster and easier than building. All the same battles have to fought again, generation by generation, just to be a little better than than previous century. Quoting Harry Hindu
I wonder what percent of us actually understand more about the universe and ourselves and whaty percent has given up the supernatural answers. The regressives are even now dismantling the edifices of science and learning.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I said children need laws to protect them from bad parents and other kinds of harm
I don't, Athena doesn't, maybe you don't; muggers and rapists do.
Quoting Athena
Your Huxley quote is apparently from Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958. He must have known that the past was as full of tyrants as his present - or any present. Tyrants have always managed to organize and supply their regimes. But he didn't know what technological advances were going to take place in the next half century.
TOS = The Original Series
TNG = The Next Generation
Yes, I have watched them - hence my comparison of the various cultures and their political structures in my prior post.
Quoting Athena
Trump is a business person.
Quoting Athena
He came to power like every other Republican and Democrat - through deception and manipulation of the fears of citizens.
How do you determine what is best for other people that you have never met? Who gets to determine what is best for everyone?
Quoting Vera Mont
Really? So when in history did humans solve the problem of going to the Moon before solving it in 1969, or cure polio and the measles, etc.? Those were not problems that were solved and now solved again. Science is what makes society progress, and it wasn't until only a few hundred years ago that Science was free to challenge the claims of the Church, to allow what we have now - the freedom to ask question and get answers, and then challenge the current answers when better ones come along.
Quoting Vera Mont
Where? I know they are trying, but they are not succeeding. There is no forced prayer in public schools, and public schools do not teach intelligent design, but evolution. And it's not just either or, many have tried to integrate evolution and the Big Bang with intelligent design. They fail because they do not realize the logic and observation simply doesn't support it.
Quoting Vera Mont
And this is exactly what I've been saying. Libertarians are not anarchists. Libertarians believe in limited government. Most (I would say a vast majority of) mothers do not need a law telling them to care for their baby. As such, the laws to not kill your baby is only for a small minority of people. When you only need laws to protect yourself from a small fraction of the populaton, you don't need a big, bloated government to do that - just a limited one.
Fine. The subject is tired, cranky and should be sent to bed.
Call me delusion. but I think the following things are pretty darn good for people that I have never met:
- having access to quality health care
- knowing that you will always have a roof over your head no matter how poor you are
- knowing that you will never go hungry,
- knowing that you will not be sent to prison for having the wrong religious or political beliefs
- knowing that you will not be sent to prison for having a tattoo
- etc
In fact I will go out on a limb and say that these things are good for societies - not just for individual people.
I see you are on the same page as AmadeusD. Human nature has not changed but its organization and technology has changed.
The news today is talking about the US Constitution and whether Trump is violating laws set in the Constitution, as Hitler violated the rules of Germany. This also involves showmanship and psychological manipulation of the masses. And my point is what education has to do with leaving our democracy undefended.
I also want to highlight the change in national economies since WWII that increased our expectations, with a desire to feed and house everyone and ensure everyone has medical care. Never in the history have people expected so much from their governments. Our modern world is a new experience, and we haven't worked out all the problems. Perhaps we should stop feeding and giving medical care to worthless people? Perhaps I should refuse a pacemaker that would extend my life?
Thank you, those are moral considerations and this thread is about such morals. We imagine there is a left and right that have opposing moral values. In the US we have a constitution that is supposed to protect freedom of speech and human rights, but since education dropped the humanities in favor of education for technology, we don't seem to share an understanding of our Constitution and the same morals.
Leaving moral training to the church is a path to fascism, an economic model that has communist qualities but protects private ownership, while the government regulates Industry.
Remember when we said "Mind your own Business". I think right now, a few business folks wish Trump would stay away from plans that are ruining their businesses. Trump is not all wrong, but neither is he all right, and here we come to the morality of our Constitution, shared decision making and limited governing powers, versus the authority of one over all.
When we consider the right or wrong of governing power, we might also consider Christianity and if a God works through one strong person or all of us, and is there a Satan that threatens us? Does God protect churches from tornadoes and other natural disasters, or should we consider the possibility that science is correct about the harm humans are doing to the planet? Morality and science have a relationship.
Star Trek visited the theme of AI controlling humans a few times. The Borg was totally dehumanizing, but not all computer-controlled societies were so totally dehumanized.
I expected Alan Jacob's book "How to Think" to explain deductive and inductive reasoning, but he explains what experience and emotions have to do with our thinking. If all we know about life is our own experiences, our moral judgment will be extremely limited. If we are lucky enough to travel around the world and experience how others live, our perspective will be very broad, and our moral thinking will be affected by that.
I am not sure, but I think Christians have a more narrow perspective, and many ignore science because they fear it could be the work of Satan, and that is a good excuse for not putting in the effort to understand science. Believing themselves and those who share the same religious beliefs know God and that is the only thing important to know, they are not apt to learn a lot about others. It isn't just what they do not know and do not care to know, but their experience of life and their emotions lead to narrow moral thinking. They intentional avoid those who are not one of them.
For example, years ago, when we still had dial-up, I met Palestinians and an Egyptian in a forum and we became good friends. Those friendships are my emotional reason for defending Palestinians. Those who believe there is a moral justification for what Israel has done to the Palestinians are unlikely to feel friendly with Palestinians. Not knowing the Palestinians nor knowing the history of modern Israel, they will not have an emotional motive to defend them. They are going on what they are told by people who are just like them. MAGA has a thinking problem because they lack the experience and emotions for better thinking.
The last two are Libertarian positions. The first three, how can government guarantee any of those things? If there were a natural disaster would you wait for government assistance, or try to find food and shelter yourself, and would it be government or the kindness of other people you have established relations with that help you?
Sure. This can be said of most Reps and Dems. The problems is that Reps and Dems are not allowed to disagree with their own party and tell them when they are wrong, and find the good in the other side to reach a compromise.
Is eliminating government waste a good thing? Instead of just working against anything Trump does, even though they have done it themselves in the past, why not try to work with the other side to have some input in what is being cut. The Dems have cried wolf so many times when it comes to Trump that no one cares any more about the fear-mongering they propagate, even when he actually does something wrong - like when he recently spoke about ignoring the separation of church and state. The Dems are just as much at fault that Trump is president as Trump is.
You wound me deeply!
Quoting Athena
What's that to do with the historical inaccuracy of the Huxley quote?
Every society uses state-of-the-art technology to organize its power structure and deal - well or badly - with its population's requirements. This includes all tyrants and despots of past and present. They had available exactly the same tools as did their opposition.
Quoting Athena
I'm quite familiar with your point by now. It's a bit late to fix the multitude of Trumpian crimes with a change in education. Anyway, his regime intends to do away with education, social services and science altogether. Once they're gone, whoever is still here (unlikely to include your or me) will have to rebuild civilization in their own way.
Might I say the problem is human nature? We are evolved social animals, and as such, we have a strong sense of belonging. Labeling people is divisive. It winds up making membership in this group or that one very important. This truth was the most powerful factor in Nazi Germany. Like our South is doing now, citizens were encouraged to report their family, friends, neighbors to the gestapo. In some Southern states reporting someone for being involved in an abortion is encourage, with zero awareness this is one of the things that made the Nazi so powerful. People lived in fear of being suspect so they were driven to prove they were faithful to the Nazi party. This a truth of all groups, a fear of not belonging, or worse a fear of persecution.
Trump is like Hitler because he understands how to work our emotions to increase his own popularity. When we attract the Republicans or the Democrats, we participate in this divisiveness. We create a show that persuaded others to be one of "us", and possibly do terrible things to one of them. Now the peaceful protest become more and more threatening, as we must prove to our friends we are one of them and we are not afraid but bold, very bold.
What we see here is a troop of chimpanzees. Our need for belonging can lead to heroic behaviors or shockingly evil and destructive behaviors, as people are caught up in the moment, just like a lynching mob. Image being one of them, living in constant fear of persecution or being high on being a valuable member willing to step into the leadership role.
In the past, we were wiser when we designed our Constitution with checks and balances and prepared the young for good citizenship. Our forefathers knew our weaknesses and gave in to them on the slavery issue while also limiting the power of government. If we talked as much about the democracy we inherited and stopped playing into the divisiveness, perhaps our Hitler would be less successful in destroying and more successful in making changes that need to be made.
Unfortunately, not every citizen is well educated. If we studied German history, we would know what the Prussians did to manifest a very powerful bureaucratic power over the masses and the potential problems of this organization. The general public has no understanding of why this bureaucratic order is what we fought against.
This is from the 1917 National Education Association Conference in Portland, Oregon....
"Small wonder that the ideals of these countries clash with ours. With these people nationalism is a delusion by which they have perverted their civilization into a mechanical organization of power that now menaces the truest interests and welfare of mankind." Sara H. Failey, Teacher of English.
Fascism started in Italy and spread to Europe and the US.
"Whatever their efficiency, such great organizations are so impersonal they bear down on the individual lives of the people like a hydraulic press whose action is completely impersonal and therefore effective in crushing out individual liberty and power." Tagore, poet and seer of India.
Please excuse, but we can not carry on this discussion until I see your ID. Perferably, you have the Real ID driver's licence that is required for you to fly even if your flight does not leave the USA. Not really, but I hope I have made a point about what we have turned into. Today our experience of being a US citizen is very different from being a citizen before WWII, when we could freely travel to Canada or Mexico with no ID. Roosevelt and Hoover gave as a more efficient bureaucracy with new powers that were essential to our progress but also, dropping the humanities in our education to focus on education for technology for military and industrial purpose, and the spread of that bureaucratic model to all industry and institutions, means Germany effectively won the war because we are not the democracy we defended in two world wars. We are the repressive, militant order we defended our democracy against.
And won't we be proud when Trump ties his birthday to a Military parade. We will all wear our Trump hats and shirts so everyone knows we follow our great leader and our great military might, and God given ability to rule the earth. Amen
Today is nothing like the past. History might knock us down as it knocked Athens, Rome, the Mayans and the Nazi down.
On what facts do you base your argument? Education is scrambling to fix the problem. I am not alone, but unfortunately, I appear to be the only one who knows what wars have to do with changes in education and what the Prussian new military order had to do with increasing bureaucratic power.
In the past, armies provided their provisions, not industrial leaders.
Okay, where are you facts?
I am not sure. I think we need to consider our human nature and what brings out the best in us and what brings out the worst in us. In the past, we were concerned with human dignity. That is why social security was based on age rather than need. At the time, Roosevelt was hoping older people would give up their jobs to younger ones. Social Security enabled them to stop working on the grounds that they earned their Social Security, and it was not charity.
I see many people on the edges of society, and I am not sure if meeting all their needs without them earning what they get is a good thing? I think we need to have organization for our personal lives and a way of giving back. What do you think?
Huxley was. He had no excuse for misstating the role of past dictators.
Quoting Athena
Education is about to be disembowelled by the Trump administration, as well as several Republican states. Even if some of it survives and does a better job that its predecessors, their product won't be ready to vote until long after the damage has been done. Quoting Athena
P 1:It's 2025.
P2: In 2024, a large enough percentage of the product of American education elected a mad, narcissistic ignoramus with a long record of criminal behaviour, public lying and reckless rhetoric president.
P3: After everything that mni wrecked in 100 days, his approval rating among the product of American education is still 41%.
P4: The next election is three and half years away.
C: however hard American education scrambles to reform, it cannot conceivably turn out an educated electorate in that time.
The vast majority of political messaging is made to work people's emotions, though. That's not just Trump.
Worse still, with Trump it is very obvious, and thus limited in its effectiveness, whereas the messaging you ought to be really worried about is the stuff that is not obvious, and thus finds its way straight into their recipients' subconscious.
They become societal paradigms which are no longer questioned, no matter how defunct they might be.
What you said might radically change for at least two reasons. The reason that is the most fun to think about is how new technology is making it possible for us watch the brain working and apply test to better understand how our brains work.
The second reason is a reaction to what is happening today. Many schools dropped civics and education for the humanities was completely replaced with education for technology. We are seeing the result of that now. For God's sake, we have a President who does not know the Constitution and can not answer questions about Constitutionally protected rights and wrongs. There is a chance voters may not have made this choice if they knew the Constitution and why it is important.
The 1958 National Defense Education Act put the Military and Industry in charge of education decisions.
I am saying this education for the Military, Industrial Complex is what made the US like the Germany that followed Hitler. Okay, Trump has moved for a complete breakdown of this Military Industrial Complex reality. That is both good and bad! I hate doing all the talking so can you or anyone else say why the change is both good and bad?
I know I have overlooked the concern for today's social media. That is serious but if we want change it must begin with education, so I narrowing my reply to public education.
I'm not that familiar with the current states (50?) of US education; I only see the odd articles like this; and on book-banning, forbidding the discussion of certain subjects. And one can't help noticing the astonishingly uneven levels of rudimentary knowledge. While there are many clever, well-read, knowledgeable Americans in medicine and other sciences, in entertainment, literature and jurisprudence, so many (even among university educated) people seem be clueless about so many things that they ought to know. (See Trump for a high-profile example. He's supposed to have earned a degree in economics.)
Quoting Athena
To impart to children the information required to navigate their culture and become aware of other cultures, the skills to take care of themselves, the foundations and tools to continue learning more complex material and they grow older; enable students to find sources of information, solve problems, evaluate situations and communicate with others. To prepare the young for responsible citizenship.To teach young people any skills and knowledge required to perform whatever specialized work they have the talent and inclination for, so that they can contribute and prosper.
Quoting Athena
In elementary school: literacy and numeracy, basic geography and history, science - heavy on nature studies - music, art, literature, articulate discourse and social demeanour; health, safety and physical fitness, survival skills. Also the practice of elementary civics, kitchen and workshop skills.
In middle school, wider and deeper literature, art and music, research, debate and review; peer justice. Advanced history, geography, science, math and civics; comparative religion and at least one other language. Continue that through secondary school and build on the other subjects as the students advance.
From age 12 onward, take at least three months out of the school-year for real life activities: construction, community services, camping and foraging, mechanics, food production; various team projects under the guidance of adults who are versed in the particular trade.
Of course, throughout, the students need to be tested effectively for comprehension of what they have learned before proceeding to the next level. Rigid division of grades by age is ridiculous.
It's often said that education alone does not actually make people less susceptible to propaganda, and in fact might make people more susceptible, and that includes academics.
One reason for that is obvious, namely that the public education they're being given is often heavily influenced by the state apparatus, laying the bedrock for the propaganda people will be presented with later in life.
But the second reason is perhaps not so obvious, and in my view more interesting.
I think modern education has a way of disconnecting people from their intuition, and attempts to replace it with pure reason. Such people are, paradoxically, much easier to manipulate. Because reason has its limits too, and a clever mind can rationalize literally anything - something which the propagandist makes eager use of.
Even though the person themselves is disconnected from their intuition, the propagandist makes it their profession to understand, and often has a much better understanding of what makes their target audience tick than the audience itself.
I love what you said about education. That is a liberal education, not education for technology. I think some schools are returning to that, but right now, it may be hard to get good books for a grade school liberal education.
Brain research resulting from improved technology for brain research may help turn the tide back to liberal education. Once the brain is better understood and the benefits of education for good citizenship and good moral judgment are understood, I think liberal education will be more appreciated.
It is cost-effective to have education for good citizenship because that is how to prevent crime and keep prison and welfare populations low. And it does so without authoritarian rule above the people. Learning self-government begins with governing ourselves and knowing that obeying the law is how to protect our liberty.
:chin: It is just Trump and the leaders of India and Brazil, and maybe Israel, because Israel is so much about Jewish versus everyone else. Hitler and the Nasi did a lot of surveys in the rural areas to find out what people were most angry about and what they feared most, then they rented large rooms and gave great speeches about how the Nasi party would take care of all these problems. They did this year-round and not just when an election is to happen. Fascism is built on fear and anger.
What other president of the US comes close to Trump in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NsrwH9I9vE
Your bottom line is perfect. I think we have a problem with that reality because of being overly enthusiastic about what technology can do for us and the denial of our limits. Also, when we turned to education for technology, we left moral training to the Church, and were pretty naive about understanding the importance of culture!
Eisenhower realized the dangers of this turn to technology when he warned us of the Military Industrial Complex, but I don't think he was aware of the importance of a liberal education when he asked Congress to replace our "domestic education" with education for technology. The 1958 National Defense Education Act was a reaction to Sputnik, and it had a 4 year limit. Instead of returning to our domestic education, we continued education for technology and a society with unknown values.
Countries could use psychoanalysis just like individuals may need it, because stuff in the subconscious is causing problems. Every culture has a limited consciousness, with some things being taboo. This subconscious is manifested and is causing problems. This is so obvious today with Trump cramming our history of slavery into our subconscious, making it illegal to talk about this taboo subject. The Whites have always had the power to suppress and control our consciousness. How much of a jump is it from hating people of one shade to hating all colored people, and this is a cornerstone of Fascism.
Oh yes, education for technology is disconnecting us from intuition. I learned in college that our personal experiences do not matter and our arguments need to be empirical. A large part of Fascism is the power of technology and opposed to the power of the individual. We are not only separated from God, but also ourselves and in our desperate aloneness, we need the crowd. Hail, Hitler is a wonderful feeling of belonging. We disrespect our leaders but love the power of a strong leader.
I love your bottom line and see a connection to feeling separate from God and ourselves. The independent thinker is a stronger person and does not need the approval of the crowd. We thought everyone to be independent thinkers and replace that with "group thinking".
More recent brain research is making us aware of what our emotions have to do with what we think.
You go to technical school for careers in technology - but only after having mastered the principles and operations of science and math through elementary and secondary school.
I've never figured out exactly how 'education for technology' differs from general education.
What's wrong with the current system is that teachers don't have the time, resources or freedom to help each student develop their understanding of the world at their own pace.
But that was never the case in formal classrooms; only Montessori, Waldorf and various new nature-centered initiatives recently starting in Canada are child-centered. It doesn't matter whether the children have to chant the times tables or a loyalty oath or a prayer, it's equally regimented. And the curricula are all based on an unquestioned value system. Little children are taught arithmetic with exampled of the price of apples and told stories about beggar girls becoming princesses, subliminally reinforcing, day by day, the inevitability of a monetary class system. Or they're told stories about brave soldiers and patriotism. Or Jesus and the saints. Some prefabricated frame of reference from which they are not permitted to stray.
So, the values taught in formal education systems always, always instill in the impressionable young the status quo of their their society. Wealth is good, poverty is shameful. Christians are virtuous; pagans are immoral. My country ('s current government), right or wrong, is worth dying and killing for. Love God, the Queen, the Flag, the President, the Shah.... no difference. Good citizenship in each country takes a slightly different form, but it's always about obeying the Law.
I wonder what we'd discover about the present state of American affairs if we reviewed the history of school curricula and voting patterns, state by state. Would the roots of this 'moral' divide become more evident?
Quoting Athena
Wouldn't a more equitable distribution of wealth be even more effective? And maybe enacting fair laws?
I am not against regimented education. Some things just have to be memorized, and when they are, that frees the mind for more complex thinking. I so wish I could spend more time with you, but I am in a rush to join friends at Cafe 60, and what you said is sooo good, I want to have time to work on a response. One reason my thinking is different is that it comes out of very old books, and I love it when someone engages me is a discussion of education and forces me to think about what I think. You have stirred many thoughts. Thank you
If it stopped at times tables and metric conversion, passages from Hamlet or The Highwayman, I'd have no problem with it, either. It's the loyalty oaths, patriotic platitudes and reverence for the aristocracy (landed, business, military or clerical) that I find offensive. That's what makes political disagreement a moral issue; what puts political parties into the same category as churches.
Are you saying literacy in the classics is a good thing?
Why do you object to loyalty oaths?
I was not sure what a patriotic platitude is, so I googled that term and got these examples...
What is the problem with those statements? I think some defining statements are necessary. It might be a good thing if all citizens agreed on these platitudes. Trump appears unaware of them, making me think his followers are also unaware of them. I don't think that is a good thing.
I think some people relate to political parties as they relate to foot ball teams, and that kind of a relationship is not equal to church membership because there is a lack of sense of responsibility. As a citizen and church member there should be a sense of responsibility and that is not so with foot ball.
That is a lovely question. Some members of society contribute more than others. I think that justifies differences in resources. This was not as much of a problem as it is today. Our cities and towns have a surplus of non-productive human consumers. What is fair?
Of course. Not just the 'classics', in all cultures, all kinds of [age-appropriate] literature. I studied The Highwayman in Grade 8 and wasn't particularly impressed (though I learned a lot about meter, cadence and alliteration, which have all stood me in good stead.) My bother, who was in Gr. 5, loved it so much, he kept reciting it for years, the way I love The Walrus and the Carpenter, which we didn't study in school. Yes, this was good for us.
Quoting Athena
I explained above: indoctrination; the making of baby zealots before they can read, think critically or make informed choices. The internalize early in life, the assumptions they will not question: ours is the best political system; ours is the best social organization; ours is the best economic system; ours is the best religion; we are the best people in the world.
Quoting Athena
Short answer: they're wishful thinking at best - more often, lies.
Quoting Athena
If all citizens agreed that these statements should become an accurate description of the actual country in which they live, and worked toward that end, that would be good. Believing they are true when a Nixon or (gods help you all!!) a Trump is allowed to gain power over that country, not so good.
Quoting Athena
They're not unaware: they've been convinced, via slogans and patriotic claptrap, that they alone have the truth of those statements. After all, America used to be great (they've been told); the Democrats or BLM or uppity wimmin, or immigrants made it ungreat. So they alone are qualified to put it back at the pinnacle of Creation, which is the rightful place of [God, Guns and Trump] America.
Quoting Athena
Except, the distribution is upside-down. The poor produce; the rich consume. Quoting Athena
True. The robber barons of 1900 were fewer in number had 400 times as much as the average employee; the present-day ones have 4000 times as much. But, of course, in the olden days, even after they lost their slaves, they could take advantage of cheap labour from children, women and immigrants. They had few restrictions in terms of product or worker or environmental safely .... Oh, wait, that's true again. Well, the future ones will have robots to do the work and concentration camps for the surplus population.*
Quoting Athena Oh, yes, the homeless people who "made the wrong choices'. They're a burden on society. The landlords who own a hundred thousand rental units as well as their own six or seven luxury residences are pillars of the community.
Quoting Athena
Think about it and devise your own scale of justice.
*Re which: You know Trump wants to give people $5000 per new baby (presumably white, born in Christian wedlock) You can deport five Hispanic children for that, if you skip all the tedious due process. It costs $+/- 18,000 in medical bills to have a baby in the US - that's before medical care, feeding, loss of pay and daycare even begin. The man has a BSc in economics.
You dont understand, perhaps willfully? We all have the same moral intuitions. How could we not?! Its just that, according to moral foundations theory, conservatives value intuitions more evenly and liberals favor care and fairness, if I recall correctly. The idea that liberals cannot conceive of or are lacking intuitions like loyalty or sanctity is obviously absurd.
Btw, can you explain to me why I support a womans right to choose despite the intuition that abortion is wrong?
But that's not the present political divide, is it? There are no real conservatives in evidence now. (They exist and still hold the same values they did in 1900 and 1950 and 2000, but they have no public voice.) The political divide is liberals of every stripe and moderates vs the MAGA cult. When there were sincere conservatives and liberals, they could communicate and compromise.
According to MFT, I guess MAGA is skewed towards Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Liberty/Oppression.
I have no idea what that means.
Youre not missing anything. Many consider moral foundations a half-baked theory.
Wait a minute-. I am not sure, but I think I see the world very differently from how you think I do. I have
always lived in poverty. I know poverty as a result of capitalism and sexism, and someone has to care for the children, the sick, and the elderly, and we women do that because it is the right thing to do. I have volunteered most of my life because I need to believe I am of value to society. At first, I had a husband who supported the family with money, and soon after the divorce, I qualified for disability. The idea of taking charity and not giving back is shameful to me. I feel fortunate that I have had good volunteer opportunities.
However, that is not how I judge everyone, because much of the time, I was working with people with more severe disabilities. For a while, I had a job preparing young, severely cognitively challenged people for jobs. That was so sad because they were hopeful and worked hard, but there are no jobs for them.
My attitude about accepting charity is from my grandmother's generation, when severely cognitively challenged people would get jobs, because of a community agreeing human dignity is important, and jobs were not so demanding! Roosevelt used government money to provide jobs, not charity. Social Security was based on age, not need, to protect the dignity of older people.
I have to run- and I hope we can continue this discussion. I could be wrong, but when it comes to morals, I think human dignity is a priority! When I stayed at home to raise my children, I thought having a paid job was a wonderful thing, and I looked forward to it. I volunteered and went to college, expecting to have a career. Whatever, I know a lot about poverty and the people living at this level, and also those living in prison. The underbelly of our great society.
It wasn't about your view of the world. (I'm familiar with your history of good works and civic improvement.) But I did have a problem with
Quoting Athena
Which sounds a lot like what I hear every day from right-wingers and prosperous people loath to give up any of their privilege, let alone pay their fair share into the government coffers; who assert that poverty and disenfranchisement are personal choices, while supporting the party that promotes every retrograde measure from whites-only immigration to defunding school lunches.
I agree that human dignity - indeed, the dignity of all sentient beings - is important. I disagree that it can be attained either by scutt-work or charity - though both may often be preferable to starvation. Throwing people on the mercy of the "job-creators" is not the solution. A more equitable social organization, economy and legal system is far preferable. Old age security, health care, shelter, safe food and water should be the right of every person, not something they have to scramble, fight one another or beg for.
Jobs as we knew them are disappearing fast. A living wage for all is an impossibility already; in 15-20 years (always assuming this civilization keeps operating that long), gainful employment will be the norm for only about half the adult population. Very large adjustments must be made in that time to avoid collapse. Adjusting to a realistically envisioned future is not the direction in which I see America heading atm.
But don't you see I am one of them! Don't you get how valuable we become when there are not enough people to do what needs to be done, but when there are more than enough people and they must compete against each other, then is when we feel pushed out and unneeded. Some of us are givers and excellent workers, but we are not intentionally competitive. Because we are not competitive, we are losers, and people look down on us and do not see our value. If others do not see our value, on what can we base a good opinion of ourselves? It is a downward spiral, and it can be next to impossible to get into a positive frame of mind. Life can become overwhelming, and that means being dysfunctional.
Quoting Vera Mont
We have agreement. I am horrified, even though Trump says we must have industry, when people speak of jobs, they are talking about a few good-paying jobs that require a college education, not employment for people who are not college minded. If we want everyone working, we must create simple jobs and make the work place a desirable place to be.
Our industry is based on the autocratic model, and that is very bad for our families and democracy and in general, our character. It creates inequality and authority over the people. If we want to make the US great we need Deming's model for Industry. Here are some of the points...
What does that mean? I just posted Deming's points for making better products and creating a better work environment. It is not half-baked. During the Great Depression, he tried to get Industry in the US to use his model and our autocratic Industry refused his model, so Franklin Roosevelt set out to regulate Industry from the federal government level, increasing the autocracy of our democracy. While Deming's model increases democracy and makes it better. That is also better for families because it is more humane and works to improve everyone and everything.
Because the US rejected his model, he went to Japan after the war and taught his model to the Japaness who than proceeded to out compete us for world markets. Today when people talk about what kind of car to buy, they talk about Toyota and Subreu, not Ford of Crysiller. Our high-tech electronics make Japan great because they are the ones putting out the best products.
Using the Deming model is better for families than the autocratic model. If our schools prepared us for a democracy and our Industry used the democratic model, our Democracy could be great and could manifest the Enlightenment dream of a better life for everyone.
Good reason to forbid birth-control! Oppressive governments and churches have always demanded more children than parents can support: they need the extra people for cannon-fodder, cheap labour and to keep them too busy fighting over scraps to turn on their oppressor.
Quoting Athena
No, even in well-earned old age, you are providing needed services and support to your fellow humans. In my ever-diminishing way, I, to am contributing. That's what society is supposed to be.
Quoting Athena
Another side-effect of the system that works to the benefit of the takers. How often have you been told that it's not the system that's wrong, but your attitude?
The system is wrong, in so many ways that it can't be righted with the tools currently available to the average citizen - especially since the average citizen doesn't even have the tools to think about what's wrong.
Quoting Athena
None of that will work as long as there are too many people believing they need jobs and too few in control of paying employees. We don't create jobs - which sounds like undignified make-work anyway and unsustainable. Nor do we need to. You know what people need and what makes them happy; you know what should be done, made, planted, cleaned up, repaired, improved, protected, healed, etc. There is useful work for every level of ability, whether some industrialist thinks it will make him richer or not. You can see how much more works should be done than volunteers are able to do, but workers need to eat for the energy to do it.
I would rather do away with money - it's just too prone to corruption! But I doubt most people could get their heads around the concept. They could fathom a universal basic income.
Everywhere it's been tried, the results were positive, even though most trials have been too small a sample to change a community. People don't sit around drinking beer: they learn things, try things, start things, provide services to others and make an effort to earn their neighbours' respect. They stay in school longer, commit fewer crimes and have fewer health problems. Every instance I know of that a larger-scale pilot was initiated, the next conservative administration cancelled it.
Quoting Athena
But that's how the bosses want it! And since the bosses finance political campaigns, they get exactly what they want.
Quoting Athena
Sounds fine, but only covers those industries that have proven profitable, even if they produce harmful things, fail to produce desirable things, distribute their product unevenly and unfairly, waste and pollute.
That ideal work-place may exist in isolated companies, but they employ fewer people with every advancement in technology - must, to stay competitive. The recommendation cannot apply to the growing number of surplus consumers. As long as Capitalism is the global religion, "we" don't have a say in the matter.
He was referring to this: not your post.
Quoting praxis
Native Americans had a domestic economy and a belief system of caring for the earth. I don't think I know enough about economics to say more. However, believe systems are important.
When the land holds resources, should these resources be viewed as shared or private? I grew up in California, aware of gold mining towns becoming ghost towns. This is nuts! Gold brings money into the neighborhood, and this leads to the value of land rising, and stores and services moving in, and everything is going great until the resource is exhausted, and then everyone's investments in the community crashes, and people move away. Shouldn't the money of the first resource be set aside to invest in an industry that will replace the first source of income, protecting everyone's investments?
I like to think morals are a matter of cause and effect. As long as we think in terms of private ownership instead of shared ownership, we will have an immoral economy because everyone's investment is unprotected.
Greeks tried different economic forms, and I think an economy based on farming, seems to do better under private ownership. However, a gold mine should not be privately owned, nor water and other naturally given resources. Industry needs to be a shared endeavor. I am not sure but just thinking out loud.
Spell check doesn't like me speaking of "community crashes"- and wants that to be one crash. But I see the community as many private investments and all of them crashing in a ghost town.
Neither. They belong to the Earth which sustains us all - unless we despoil it. The principle that works best is to take only what you need, replace or replenish it and use what you take wisely. Private ownership of land, water, mineral and food sources is wrong. No human should own more than the shelter they inhabit, the clothes they wear, the tools and vessels they use. Everything else is shared or left alone.
Quoting Athena
Alaska has an oil fund.
But, no, people motivated by money do not generally think beyond the next profit quarter, the next jackpot, the next dividend. Right now, after decades of beating out local competitors from every town they invaded, that cleared land and built roads and traffic lights for them, Walmarts and Walgreens are closing across the US, leaving thousands of people unemployed and many more thousands unsupplied with necessities.
In the 1980's the Reagan administration removed a lot of regulation from American industry and the corporations moved their operations to Mexico, India, Africa and China, where labour was cheap, environmental and worker protection was lax or non-existent. They left behind dozens of ghost towns and derelict buildings and toxic pollution. For good measure, some of them moved their headquarters, as well. Big business is free to go anywhere in the world and avoid paying taxes; their employees are not. The welfare of the community does not take precedence on the capitalist agenda.
Money has no morality and concept of cause and effect. As long as money and profit are at the center of the economy, there will be inequality, waste, environmental degradation, corruption and abuse.
If you are not yet familiar with the Venus Project, this may interest you. There are several movies, (That one was fun; your library may have it.) too, and I think, a documentary on You Tube.
Quoting Brendan Golledge
Huh? There is no left or right, us or them division of the 6 different stages.
The 6th level is the highest, and we can trace that back to Athens, Greek philosophers, and the concept of logos. Logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe, made manifest in speech. Conservatives are more likely to be stuck at the first level of obedience and punishment because they tend to rely on the Bible and ignore science or the pursuit of happiness, which is the pursuit of knowledge and is essential to a democracy, you know, rule by reason.
Our liberty is defended by following the law, and if one is not in agreement with a man-made law, then the responsible thing to do is to change the law. This means arguing that the man-made law is not compatible with the universe. So, while the Bible can be used to defend slavery, we can determine through logic that a society is much healthier when everyone has liberty and justice.
Only that there must are alternatives to capitalist, money-based economy and one of those needs to prevail before all that moral, logical, fair and democratic stuff can have any chance of survival.
I am sorry, I do not agree. If people are to have good moral judgement, we must have education for good moral judgement as we once had. Giving people charity without expecting something from them is harmful. However, along with the education, we need Industry that uses the Deming model and that is totally different from the autocratic model.
We need to feel valuable and that we belong. I would focus on creating opportunities for that, as Roosevelt did.
Adam Smith, the father of economics, strongly believed that a good economy depends on morality.
The problem is not money. Spartar determined what people needed and it provided that. It had almost complete control over everyone. Money would have given them freedom to decide what they wanted and, more importantly, freedom to think and act for themselves.
When was once, and where did their good moral judgement disappear to when something changed?
Only, of course, nothing really changed. You always had the same disparity of wealth and power, education and opportunity that you have now, the scale of which varied somewhat over time, but was always the same at its core: The have-too-much using money to bribe and corrupt the have-never-enough; cheat, exploit and intimidate the have-not.
Quoting Athena
And now we have Pope Donald I, poster child for Economics.
Quoting Athena
Maybe so, but I never suggested doing any such thing. Do the people you help pay you? People volunteer to do charity work and give food or money to those who have suffered misfortune. People in communities are supposed to pitch in an support one another.
If you were referring to UBI, it was mentioned only as a stop-gap measure for a foreseeable period of high unemployment with no other systemic relief for those left behind by automation and outsourcing.
I suggested organizing society in such a way that everyone has the opportunity to participate and nobody needs charity. That will have to wait until the present global economy collapses (They're busily chopping away at it!)
Money based systems simply do not allow for healthy society. This was so in ancient Athens, in medieval France, industrial England and electronic America.
You can teach and preach and pontificate about virtue, and nothing changes unless the system changes.
I suggest there's a reason you are unable to make reasonable responses to critiques. Lines like this make it obvious you are operating on bullshit personal beliefs and not doing any reasoning at all. A good example is this:
Quoting Vera Mont
There is no way to read this, other than that you cannot grasp reality. Everyone does have the opportunity to participate (unless physically unable, which you or I couldn't account for anyway). Charity is required in a just society because plenty of people are unable to participate. This take ignores almost everything important about discussions around social welfare. Not surprising, but something its probably time to front up to if you want to make some sense.
Quoting Vera Mont
I missed this. The Venus Project is utterly bereft of anything realistic or moral. Jacques Fresco was an absolute asshole (I met him multiple times) who did not give a flying fuck about anything but being a Jesus character to his followers. Unfortunately, several friends saw hiim this way, sunk their lives into his project and got left in the dirt. There's a reason this project has been going on for nearly 30 years and has gone absolutely nowhere - particularly after being associated with the absolute fucking trainwreck Zeitgeist. This explains a lot about how you're viewing hte world - totally unrealistic and ignorant.