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Orkeosaurus
I think that who gets to vote and who doesnt should be decided by the people - either directly or through representatitves - when the government is established and should require a supermajority , say 2/3 or 3/4, to modify afterwards. Basically what we did at the founding of this country, and the process we have now. That process appears to be inclusive rather than exclusive, as all kidns of groups that originally could not vote now can. I would argue that process has gone too far. We shouldnt restrict suffrage based on sex or race like we used to - we should restrict it based on the demonstrated capacity to manage ones own affairs. for instance if you're crazy, a bum, on government assistance, in a detox program, etc. - you cant handle your own affairs and therefore have no right to tell me how to handle mine - to vote.

If someone proposes to take away the right of someone else to vote then I think there should be a legal process, with the same system of protections, appeals, and review that we have for anyone who has to defend themselves in court. It should be an open and a public process, like any other legal proceeeding.

No I dont think we should take away other peoples rights like speech protection from false imprisonment being compelled to testify against themself etc. I just mean restriction of the franchise.

yes I think an ideological consensus in general is very important. we all need to be playing out of the same, or at least a similar, play book, or else there will be total chaos. I mean you couldnt play a game of 40k if no one agreed about the rules. Well how are we supposed to live our lives when no one agrees about the rules for that either? Its basically make it up as you go along right now. I think the results of that are pretty obviously bad. But its none of the states business except as it effects peoples rationality, and even then only to the extent that tehy are participating in government - to the extent that tehy are voting or holding office.

yes I suppose its possible that the consensus of society can be that consensus is unimportant. which is more or less what we have now, although its a consensus based on a recognition of universal ignorance more than anything else. there's no agreement about what mroality is beond some vague talk about not hurting other people or doing good to others. as far as substantial foundations for why this is right and that is wrong, it doesnt exist, except to say dont judge me and i wont judge you. ie lets write each other moral blank checks for any kind of behavior....
AF


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Ahtman wrote:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:what I'm saying is that the consensus about what is morally acceptable - in an individuals life - has broken down.

And I am saying it is a load of hooey.

witty. elegant. exact. irrefutable. not only do you smash all opposing arguments, you do it with style.

I gave your argument the respect it deserved. At least I was on topic and not strawmanning my way into a tangent on grammar. In a formal written argument it may be out of place to phrase a sentence in such a manner, but in an informal setting such as this, and with sarcasm being such a large element, there is nothing wrong with it. In the end what we learned is that you had no real response so you nitpicked. It isn't an uncommon tactic.

In any setting whatever the inability to communicate clearly disqualifies a person from participating.
I do in fact have a response - its in my reply to monsterrain. of course its possible that someone who cant construct a sentence knows all about american history. but its not likely.

anyway if you'll start making cogent arguments phrased in readable english I promise to treat your posts with more respect.
pinky swear.
honest.
AF


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dogma
about temperance... well yes I guess you have to define the group when you're talking about the consensus it is to share. In a way moral consensus is what creates a group so thats a pretty good dividing line right there.... Irish Catholics and Native born protestants occupied pretty different cultures in the middle of the 19th century but shared the same government, hence the conflict...

about abolitionism. well lets look at it from the other way. If it wasnt a moral consensus, then look what happened afterwards. The American Civil War was a national disaster..... 600,000 people died. look at what kind of stuff a lack of consensus about core values can lead to.

I agree with you that americans tend to make every political issue into a moral one. I think its a false conflation. whether to get involved in ww1 for instance shouldnt have been about whether the germans were good or bad - just about how the country's interests were best served. same thing with any other foreign involvement. kosovo for instance.

I can respect that we have a difference of opinion....
I just enjoy good conversation
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:In any setting whatever the inability to communicate clearly disqualifies a person from participating.

Oh please, I know even with your limited faculties you know the difference between academic and informal. If it were really that serious we could destroy your arguments on much the same grounds as they are not following proper standards. Of course I think anyone reading knows it was never about the grammar, it was a about you being petty and petulant. Now you are trying to create some false qualifications for the discussions based on your own personal weakness. You were the one that said there were no verbs, and was wrong, twice. Your jump away from the point and to these kinds of insults shows that you must not have a good grasp of the subject. There is some very vanilla, middle-of-the-road thinking coming from out of your corner so I still have little to no reason to hold your thoughts in that high of an esteem. Your expression of American history comes across as someone who has taken a college level survey course on the subject, but not advanced studies. That also goes for your thoughts on Political Science and Philosophy in regards to morality and the state. I'm not saying you are uneducated, but you certainly aren't as educated as you want to appear to be. Just because I'm glib, sarcastic, and place little weight in an OT board on a gaming website doesn't mean that I am a fool or an idiot.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:I think that who gets to vote and who doesnt should be decided by the people - either directly or through representatitves - when the government is established and should require a supermajority , say 2/3 or 3/4, to modify afterwards. Basically what we did at the founding of this country, and the process we have now. That process appears to be inclusive rather than exclusive, as all kidns of groups that originally could not vote now can. I would argue that process has gone too far. We shouldnt restrict suffrage based on sex or race like we used to - we should restrict it based on the demonstrated capacity to manage ones own affairs. for instance if you're crazy, a bum, on government assistance, in a detox program, etc. - you cant handle your own affairs and therefore have no right to tell me how to handle mine - to vote.

Hmm. So am I right to assume that further changes will still be discounting votes, in accordance with the first change? If so, you do still run the risk of the spiral into oligarchy, although the difficulty in making the changes to suffrage do help to put a damper on it. Theoretically you could also have a system where the there is a smaller group of voters who make general policy decisions, and this group may have people excluded from it, and where there is also a larger group that defines the parameters of the first, and is inalienable. (Now I'm just speculating, I suppose...)

If someone proposes to take away the right of someone else to vote then I think there should be a legal process, with the same system of protections, appeals, and review that we have for anyone who has to defend themselves in court. It should be an open and a public process, like any other legal proceeeding.

There are two problems with this that come to mind; the first is that it's expensive. Criminal trials maybe a necessity; after all - you can't just throw people in prison without recourse - and the costs of civil trials are lessened by need for people to hire their own lawyers and so forth. However, a "moral" trial couldn't work like a civil trial, because it would allow the wealthy to systematically eliminate people from the voting pool with too much ease. That leaves most of the expense of a criminal trial, further compounded by fact that the huge savings of plea bargaining wouldn't be present.

The second, larger issue, is that the court system is simply not that accurate. Criminal cases need strong physical evidence to have a guilty verdict rendered, and they still often come to the wrong conclusion. What you intend to put on trial would seem to be, essentially, character evidence. Character evidence is not traditionally allowed in civil trials (in the U.S.) or to be brought up by the prosecution in criminal trials. That right there should say something about its reliability. If character evidence is so untrustworthy that it can't be brought to bear against someone accused of murder - and used alongside physical evidence - how can it be anywhere near reliable enough to be brought to bear for being an "irresponsible voter", with no major physical evidence being used alongside it? (Further, the huge problems with the accuracy of character evidence, if this idea went through, necessitate an extensive appeals process, which compounds the cost problems.)

Now, one way to go about things is to say forget all of this: people can vote if they want to. No one will take away their right to vote. However, they may give up their right to vote, voluntarily, in exchange for public assistance. This is, in my opinion, a hell of a lot more feasible than attempting to try people for an "inability to take care of themselves", as the people losing their right to vote will have volunteered for the arrangement. However, a serious problem with this idea arises if public assistance starts to become increasingly necessary. You could easily end up with a slow slide into non-citizenhood for most people, having been forced there by threat of starvation, and rendered unable to help reverse economic policies which are unfairly screwing them over. The idea could lead to what could really only be called a form of serfdom, not dissimilar from what destroyed the Roman republic.

No I dont think we should take away other peoples rights like speech protection from false imprisonment being compelled to testify against themself etc. I just mean restriction of the franchise.

That's good, because that would open up a whole new kettle of worms.

yes I think an ideological consensus in general is very important. we all need to be playing out of the same, or at least a similar, play book, or else there will be total chaos. I mean you couldnt play a game of 40k if no one agreed about the rules. Well how are we supposed to live our lives when no one agrees about the rules for that either? Its basically make it up as you go along right now. I think the results of that are pretty obviously bad. But its none of the states business except as it effects peoples rationality, and even then only to the extent that tehy are participating in government - to the extent that tehy are voting or holding office.

So then you agree that ideological consensus is more important than personal consensus? (At least so far as policy is concerned, I suppose.) I do think a loose ideological consensus is a good thing, at least. If people don't hold as many principles in common when it comes to what the government should or should not be doing, I think it invites corruption in many cases. People will do what they think will help themselves the most because, hey, what else are you going to base your decisions on? And the masses will let corruption slide because it doesn't seem out of place. However, I may be very wrong about this. It certainly does seem to be the case that a strong ideological consensus and a great deal of corruption can go together; the attempts at communist states are a perfect example (not that I mean to go off topic, mind you, and start discussing communism!).

Regarding the 40k analogy, I guess you could say my view is this: you can play a game of 40k when you and your opponent don't agree what the rules are (i.e. RAW RAW RAW NOTHING BUT THE RAW), so long as you and your opponent have an ethos that allows you to play even when you disagree on what it is the rules actually say. For instance, I could believe that I technically don't need to reroll the damage result against a Venerable Dreadnought (because it just says I be asked to reroll it! Aren't I clever?), but nonetheless be something less than a total douche and reroll it anyways. The difference between Rules as Written and Rules as Played in this instance being akin to the difference between a person's view of true "moral law" and a person's view on how these moral laws should actually be translated into the political arena.

yes I suppose its possible that the consensus of society is that consensus is unimportant. which is more or less what we have now, although its a consensus based on a recognition of universal ignorance more than anything else. ntheres no agreement about what mroality is beond some vague talk about not hurting other people or doing good to others. as far as substantial foundations for why this is right and that is wrong, it doesnt exist, except to say dont judge me and i wont judge you. ie lets write each other moral blank checks for any kind of behavior....

It always seemed ironic to me how dogmatically opposed people are to the idea of "judging" others. Moral relativism is one of those things that really annoys me, probably to a greater degree than is sensible. (Like Avatar does.) I swear, it's just increasingly becoming an excuse to sound smart and worldly without making the slightest commitment to... well, anything. (The next time someone starts a sentence with "who are we?" I think I'm going to flip out.)

Who are we, really, to judge relativists? Relativists need love to, but they gotta pay.

Ahtman wrote:Who are we, really, to judge relativists? Relativists need love to, but they gotta pay.

Ahtman wrote:Who are we?

AbaddonFidelis wrote:sure, I can give an example. alcoholism. If my neighbor chooses to drink himself stupid every night, hey, its his life. As long as he's not hurting me, what do I care? If that alcoholic votes......... I have a big problem with that. It introduces an irresponsible person with an unrealistic set of expectations into the voting public; it also creates an incentive for a politician to pander to him. Maybe my neighbor isnt fit to work anymore because he cant stop drinking. so he loses his job. so he votes to tax me to provide him with relief. John Doe senator needs that vote, so now you have an ugly alliance between a drunk and a crooked politician.

It is amazing that you could live in a country where lobbying and moneyed interest play a direct, public role in formulatining policy, where both parties have made documented efforts to suppress the vote of demographic groups that are unlikely to vote for them... and think that the biggest worry in democracy is a 'degenerate' casting his vote.


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Frazzled wrote:Real classy way to argue a point there Sebster. Whats stage II-do you just start throwing poo?

It probably wasn't the nicest way of framing it, but I keep hearing that ridiculous claim over and over again, and it gets frustrating.

To the point. Taken to their logical conclusion both socialism and fascism are kissing cousins. At the end of the day they are still dictatorial governments telling the average person what to. Whether its what type of food they can or can't have, it doesn't matter if the guy telling you is wearing a brown shirt or a red shirt. he's still telling you what to do and using government power to make you do it.

No. Simply just no. That only works if you assume that the only possible measure of government is how much they interfere in your life, and that's a point of view that only makes sense to a subsection of Americans.

The rest of us realise that there is more to politics than just the power of the state, and that the difference between 'the state is empowered to use the means of production to provide a decent living for all' and 'you are here to make the state powerful' is a big fething deal.

Just came back. My has this post grown.

Didn't mean to say all poor are scumbags...........Just the poor that leach of everybody else. Go ahead and have 10 kids, don't expect me to pay for them though. I'm the youngest of 8, I know what government cheese and peanut butter taste like (hint...they were actually pretty good in the 80's) but my father was too proud to take a food stamp or welfare from anyone. We volunteered a lot of time at the local catholic school, that's how we were able to attend. We worked in the kitchen, made the bulletins, served all the masses, cleaned the school, set up and ran bingo,drove buses and vans when we were old enough. For my family's services they gave us reduced (almost free) tuition.

You want to have the government pay for your kids? I say you can have one on us, but if you don't go on birth control after that the checks stop coming.

Social programs should be around to help people that need it, and want to get better. The second you can afford a flatscreen TV or a SUV you are done son!
What they shouldn't be is a payment to keep a@@holes in line so that they can breed more a@@holes. That kind of thinking is crap, I don't pay ransom to anybody.

I once had a lady come into my bar (that I own) run up a tab and try to pay with a government issued child support card!? You know some places actually would have accepted that as payment?! It looked just like a credit card, found out it would have gone through if my bar was a resturant or bar and grill instead of just a boozehole.

If you work and you're poor, then you get my respect! I paid for college doing construction in the summers. I'm no elitist I'm blue pride! You should really be pissed at the people that are living better than you are by stealing the tax money from your paycheck everyday.

Andrew1975 wrote:Didn't mean to say all poor are scumbags...........Just the poor that leach of everybody else. Go ahead and have 10 kids, don't expect me to pay for them though. I'm the youngest of 8, I know what government cheese and peanut butter taste like (hint...they were actually pretty good in the 80's) but my father was to proud to take a food stamp or welfare from anyone.

You're going to have to define welfare. I just don't understand what you are trying to say here.

Food stamps and the like are a form of government welfare.

You want to have the government pay for your kids? I say you can have one on us, but if you don't go in birth control after that the checks stop coming.

It is difficult for me to respond to this in a non-sarcastic way. I'll try anyway.

How many of those people are there? If you grew up with 7 siblings and ate government cheese and peanut butter, you were are from one of the families that you spout so much hate towards. At this point I would like to remind you that you're suggestion is not mine, I have made no slight against your family; I am happy you didn't starve to death.

Social programs should be around to help people that need it, and want to get better. The second you can afford a flatscreen TV or a SUV you are done son!
What they shouldn't be is a payment to keep a@@holes in line so that they can breed more a@@holes. That kind of thinking is crap, I don't pay ransom to anybody.

I can juggle anecdotes and chainsaws at the same time. WHEEEEE!

That is an extremely offensive suggestion you just laid out right tharr.

I once had a lady come into my bar (that I own) run up a tab and try to pay with a government issued child support card!? You know some places actually would have accepted that as payment?! It looked just like a credit card, found out it would have gone through if my bar was a resturant or bar and grill instead of just a boozehole.

I'm still juggling chainsaws and anecdotes, but now I have a few bottles of Bacardi 151 in the mix. I dare you to light a match; this won't end well.

If you work and you're poor, then you get my respect! I paid for college doing construction in the summers. I'm no elitist I'm blue pride! You should really be pissed at the people that are living better than you are by stealing the tax money from your paycheck everyday.

I am a bit shocked at how many of those people I know, because I know quite a few people that deny themselves assistance out of pride, to the detriment of their character IMHO.

You should be angry at the fact that you are using emotion so ineffectively.

Banana.

sebster wrote:It probably wasn't the nicest way of framing it, but I keep hearing that ridiculous claim over and over again, and it gets frustrating.

Have you considered that the issue may be one of terminology? My usual definition of communism is a stateless society where the means of production are communally owned, and distribution is afforded "according to one's need" rather than by productive ability. While this may not actually end in equal pay for doctors and street sweepers, it may very well.


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Andrew1975 wrote:I once had a lady come into my bar (that I own)

Capitalist swine.

Orkeosaurus
well yes the legal process is expensive.... I think it might prove to be less expensive in the long run than bad governance. govt subsidies to my degenerate neighbor and her beer drinking habit for instance. its about 300 dollars a month and I know she's had it for at least 3 months. Honestly I'd be willing to spend 10,000 to keep her from voting. just on principle.

good point about how to prove the thing..... I guess you would have to have some kind of legal definition of a drunkard, with its own standard of evidence. This person would have had to be seen publicly intoxicated by at least 4 witnesses on each occasion, at least 4 times a week for 4 consectuve weeks, etc. something like that. Once the principle is admitted than implimentation is a different issue. We make mistakes in criminal trials too but we all agree that we need to have criminal trials. If we all agree that drunkards shouldnt vote then we should be willing to accept that sometimes mistakes will happen there too.

I agree with you. rather than make it a legal proceeding, it should be a condition of receiving aid from the state, which, to me, demonstrates that someone is incapable of managing their own affairs, and hence those of others. As a condition of the state paying for your basic needs - food stamps, imprisonment, institutionalization for toxic chemicals or for mental illness - you shouldnt get to vote, either while you're receiving the assistance or for a certain specified period of time afterwards. But if you recover your ability to fend for yourself, maybe you should get your voting rights back. I really think you have a better idea here... the danger of oligarchy is present here, thats true.... really all democracies are continually threatened by it though. roman democracy for instance was basically an oligarchy by the time caesar ended it. until very recently british govt was too... there were property restrictions on who could vote. ours started out that way and imo is headed back in that direction. I dont really know what to say there, except that its a part of democratic government in general.

I would argue that moral consensus, and consensus between individuals, flows out of ideological consensus on a pretty basic level. we dont have any moral consensus in this country because of a breakdown in ideological consensus, which is basically a function of the failure of the traditional religious establishment - protestantism - to reconcile the discoveries of science with their theological traditions. We dont all have to be robots marching in lock step - but we do need to have the basics in common. I agree with you it invites corruption if there is no consensus. then people wont do whats right, since no one agrees what that is anyway - they'll do what advantages them and then make up some justification for it after the fact. which is in fact what happens in this country all the time. then, as you say, people on the bottom follow the example of people on the top, and youve got one big corrupt country. not so good.

Yes. agree with you 100% about moral relativism. its disgusting. all this shades of grey, walk a mile in their shoes, dont judge me crapola. there's right and there's wrong people should be held accountable. its most irritating.
AF

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Andrew1975 wrote:I once had a lady come into my bar (that I own)

Capitalist swine.

sebster wrote:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:sure, I can give an example. alcoholism. If my neighbor chooses to drink himself stupid every night, hey, its his life. As long as he's not hurting me, what do I care? If that alcoholic votes......... I have a big problem with that. It introduces an irresponsible person with an unrealistic set of expectations into the voting public; it also creates an incentive for a politician to pander to him. Maybe my neighbor isnt fit to work anymore because he cant stop drinking. so he loses his job. so he votes to tax me to provide him with relief. John Doe senator needs that vote, so now you have an ugly alliance between a drunk and a crooked politician.

It is amazing that you could live in a country where lobbying and moneyed interest play a direct, public role in formulatining policy, where both parties have made documented efforts to suppress the vote of demographic groups that are unlikely to vote for them... and think that the biggest worry in democracy is a 'degenerate' casting his vote.

I dont think the biggest worry is a degenerate vasting his vote. It just happens to be the worry under discussion at the moment.
I would love to kick the corporations out of government. They're alot higher on my list than irresponsible people.
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:Orkeosaurus
well yes the legal process is expensive.... I think it might prove to be less expensive in the long run than bad governance. govt subsidies to my degenerate neighbor and her beer drinking habit for instance. its about 300 dollars a month and I know she's had it for at least 3 months. Honestly I'd be willing to spend 10,000 to keep her from voting. just on principle.

good point about how to prove the thing..... I guess you would have to have some kind of legal definition of a drunkard, with its own standard of evidence. This person would have had to be seen publicly intoxicated by at least 4 witnesses on each occasion, at least 4 times a week for 4 consectuve weeks, etc. something like that. Once the principle is admitted than implimentation is a different issue. We make mistakes in criminal trials too but we all agree that we need to have criminal trials. If we all agree that drunkards shouldnt vote then we should be willing to accept that sometimes mistakes will happen there too.

I agree with you. rather than make it a legal proceeding, it should be a condition of receiving aid from the state, which, to me, demonstrates that someone is incapable of managing their own affairs, and hence those of others....

Sorry but as the resident functional alcy who has AT LEAST 4 beers a day on average and still manages to type coherently, I have to object to this one. It's on the level of saying that stupid people can't vote, fat people, because of their decision to overeat, can't vote. Smokers can't vote... since if they can't even respect their own lungs, what good is their opinion? OLD people can't vote because they are all misinformed and products of a dinosaur age of thinking. Single mom's shouldn't vote because they already proved they were stupid and made bad descisions... How far can we really go with that line of thinking? BTW I bought homeless people 40oz bottles of beer to get them to register to vote back in '04 and in '08. HAHAHAAA we shall win in the end.

Frazzled wrote:

Kragura wrote:The same could be said for every governmental system except for anarchy and communism.

Are you intentionally playing ignorant here? Every communist system tried has been a bloodbath and failed utterly. Just because you choose to ignore doesn't mean it didn't occur.


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sebster wrote:And the two only start to look similar to one peculiar brand of American conservatives who view the entirety of politics as good wholesome freedom and government. To those of us not afflicted with that brain eating virus, the many actual differences between socialism and fascism actually matter.

Real classy way to argue a point there Sebster. Whats stage II-do you just start throwing poo?


To the point. Taken to their logical conclusion both socialism and fascism are kissing cousins. At the end of the day they are still dictatorial governments telling the average person what to. Whether its what type of food they can or can't have, it doesn't matter if the guy telling you is wearing a brown shirt or a red shirt. he's still telling you what to do and using government power to make you do it.


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Kragura wrote:Great post Sebster but this needs addressing

The actual substance of communism is all to do with the state owning the means of production.

No it's not, no matter what countries branded communist by the west have done, communism is about making the means of production communily owned by everyone and abolishing wage slavery and private property.

What mythical state is this? The state owns the preprty. The "people" only have a small use of it. Wage slavery is abolished? So you haven't actually studied any communist states then. Everything is now clear.

You name one country you think is communist and I will tell you why it is not.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:we dont have any moral consensus in this country because of a breakdown in ideological consensus, which is basically a function of the failure of the traditional religious establishment - protestantism - to reconcile the discoveries of science with their theological traditions.

Hmm, that certainly sounds plausible. I think there's some issue with liberalism as well. It failed to deliver, and left an ideological hole, which was then filled with a sort of feel-good idea of mass democracy, that doesn't really stand for anything. That might just be me, however.

Here we go.

"Those countries aren't Communist, they're something completely different as defined by an esoteric set of rules that were invented to weasel out of the fact that Communism has utterly failed in North Korea, China, and several other countries that have been mentioned."

Kragura wrote:You name one country you think is communist and I will tell you why it is not.

Communistland

Guitardian wrote:BTW I bought homeless people 40oz bottles of beer to get them to register to vote back in '04 and in '08. HAHAHAAA we shall win in the end.

Did they vote third party? If not, no one wins.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Guitardian wrote:BTW I bought homeless people 40oz bottles of beer to get them to register to vote back in '04 and in '08. HAHAHAAA we shall win in the end.

Did they vote third party? If not, no one wins.

Well, the beer companies did ok I would guess.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:
about abolitionism. well lets look at it from the other way. If it wasnt a moral consensus, then look what happened afterwards. The American Civil War was a national disaster..... 600,000 people died. look at what kind of stuff a lack of consensus about core values can lead to.

Sure, but from my perspective the absence of consensus is the 'natural' state of affairs. Bloody wars, and other forms of violence, are the means by which consensus is established. Given that, I think tolerating the absence of consensus on most issues is the way to go, I'm not interested in bloodying everyone who doesn't see things my way. I'll argue with them till I'm blue in the face, and maybe make light of their perspective, but violence really doesn't serve my interests.

There was a study done by Ted Gurr back in the Seventies that took a sample of all the polities that had existed from 1800-1971 in order to determine what conditions allow for a durable polity. His conclusion was that relative level of democracy and authoritarianism, while pertinent, did not serve as the most effective predictor of durability. Instead it was directiveness, or the extent to which the governing forces of the polity attempted to manipulate it, that was the most significant. In essence he found that states that were highly flexible, and therefore minimally directive, tended to last the longest.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:
I agree with you that americans tend to make every political issue into a moral one. I think its a false conflation. whether to get involved in ww1 for instance shouldnt have been about whether the germans were good or bad - just about how the country's interests were best served. same thing with any other foreign involvement. kosovo for instance.

Yeah, that's basically classical realism you're looking at there. The problem with classical realism is that it has a hard time really getting away from morality, despite its best attempts to do so. After all, how does one determine what any given state's interests are without some form of moral judgment (even if it is a different sort of morality than that which is applied to individuals).

Kragura wrote:You name one country you think is communist and I will tell you why it is not.

Well, to my knowledge there has never been any country where communism has actually "worked" as communism.

Theyve generally turned into dictatorships.

That in itself sorta says something about the inherent flaws in communism, or at least humanity.

Monster Rain wrote:Here we go.

"Those countries aren't Communist, they're something completely different as defined by an esoteric set of rules that were invented to weasel out of the fact that Communism has utterly failed in North Korea, China, and several other countries that have been mentioned."

Odd how the rules were invented 100 years before any of those countries became communist then. was Marx a time traveller?

Ahtman wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Guitardian wrote:BTW I bought homeless people 40oz bottles of beer to get them to register to vote back in '04 and in '08. HAHAHAAA we shall win in the end.

Did they vote third party? If not, no one wins.

Well, the beer companies did ok I would guess.

Oh yeah, I had forgot about them.

But just think: Nader could be president right now, if only you voted for him! Nader wouldn't have let that oil spill, he would have tested the oil rig out and informed consumers about its flaws!

Kragura wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Here we go.

"Those countries aren't Communist, they're something completely different as defined by an esoteric set of rules that were invented to weasel out of the fact that Communism has utterly failed in North Korea, China, and several other countries that have been mentioned."

Odd how the rules were invented 100 years before any of those countries became communist then. was Marx a time traveller?

Yes. Yes he was.

Rules are typically invented before the game can be played so I'm not sure what the problem of them having been written before the 'revolutions'. I don't see how it would happen any other way really.

Nevertheless, Marxists have frequently debated amongst themselves over how to interpret Marx's writings and how to apply his concepts to their contemporary events and conditions. Moreover, one should distinguish between "Marxism" and "what Marx believed"; for example, shortly before he died in 1883, Marx wrote a letter to the French workers' leader Jules Guesde, and to his own son-in-law Paul Lafargue, accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of lack of faith in the working class. After the French party split into a reformist and revolutionary party, some accused Guesde (leader of the latter) of taking orders from Marx; Marx remarked to Lafargue, "if that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist" (in a letter to Engels, Marx later accused Guesde of being a "Bakuninist").

And to other business at hand:

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Guitardian wrote:BTW I bought homeless people 40oz bottles of beer to get them to register to vote back in '04 and in '08. HAHAHAAA we shall win in the end.

Did they vote third party? If not, no one wins.

Well, the beer companies did ok I would guess.

Oh yeah, I had forgot about them.

But just think: Nader could be president right now, if only you voted for him! Nader wouldn't have let that oil spill, he would have tested the oil rig out and informed consumers about its flaws!

I think what I meant was "who are we to decide who the winners really are".

Guitardian
I spelled out exactly how far I want to go with it. If you require state assistance you dont get to vote.
why? because its demonstrated inability to order your own life.
if you cant order your own, youve got no business trying to order mine. ie writing the laws. ie voting.
AF


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orkeosaurus wrote:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:we dont have any moral consensus in this country because of a breakdown in ideological consensus, which is basically a function of the failure of the traditional religious establishment - protestantism - to reconcile the discoveries of science with their theological traditions.

Hmm, that certainly sounds plausible. I think there's some issue with liberalism as well. It failed to deliver, and left an ideological hole, which was then filled with a sort of feel-good idea of mass democracy, that doesn't really stand for anything. That might just be me, however.

no its true. liberalism works pretty well materially and tolerably well politically. but its a spiritual failure.
life to be good has to be more than free. it has to be meaningful. liberalism has no answers in that department.
AF

AbbadonFidelis shouldn't be able to vote because he is bad and should feel bad.

Just kidding, but the stuff you are suggesting is pretty goddam crazy.

Monster Rain wrote:

Kragura wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Here we go.

"Those countries aren't Communist, they're something completely different as defined by an esoteric set of rules that were invented to weasel out of the fact that Communism has utterly failed in North Korea, China, and several other countries that have been mentioned."

Odd how the rules were invented 100 years before any of those countries became communist then. was Marx a time traveller?

Yes. Yes he was.

And now to make it into a sitcom.