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@SkepticalOne
'Trump is innocent and he might be convicted.' Brilliant.
Obvious, not brilliant.
TRUMP INDICTED!
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@PREZ-HILTON
Troll me instead. I'll be less toxic
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@b9_ntt
There is no comparable law now.
Is it your claim that there are zero unfair laws?
They need something much stronger to justify civil war.
Here's a little secret they don't teach in the history books. Revolution always comes from the top down. Whenever certain members of the boys club want to take others out of power, it will happen.
Here's another secret. Nobody rebels when they are well fed and Americans are the fattest people on earth.
Have you not even noticed what is going on at voting precincts? https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/steve-bannon-election-takeover-precinct-strategy
That's one of several positionings that are occurring simultaneously, and Ron desantis is not Trump. He actually is politically savvy. The civil war has already begun.
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@b9_ntt
I'm talking about the violations of the constitution Lincoln did to win the war he started.The South started the war with the attack on Fort Sumter.Before that, Lincoln was considering not fighting secession.
Why would the confederacy suppressing rebels in their own territory be considered an attack on the USA?
Oh it was US troops on foreign territory that refused to get out.... that's an act of war.
Lincoln ignored the declarations of secession, pretended like they didn't exist weren't legally valid. That started the war, the same way it would start a war if Germany demanded the withdrawal of US troops and the executive branch pretended it never happened.
Lincoln didn't order anyone to start shooting because he didn't need to in order to start the war. Simply by ignoring the claimed transfer of power he became an aggressor under English common law.
Observe:
If Trump simply refused to acknowledge the electors from states whose elections he declared insecure he wouldn't have to shoot anyone or bomb anything. If he had surrounded himself with true loyalists instead of naive fools and deep state plants they could have simply carried on as before.
Then would come a moment where the only thing left to do is try to remove Trump by force. Would that mean Trump didn't start the war?
Right-wing claims of tyranny about mask and vaccine mandates are less than convincing. They need something much stronger to justify civil war.
You know the people who fought the civil war didn't agree about what was convincing? that's when civil wars happen.
It's a damn shame but the worse shame is the fact that conservatives will do nothing about. There will be no riots, no outrage, and the story will fade away into the news cycle. In any other country the literal arrest of the former president would instantly cause violence and riots. The right in this country has no backbone.
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@PREZ-HILTON
Is it your claim that there are zero unfair laws?
Of course not. Today there is no law comparable to legalized slavery.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Oh it was US troops on foreign territory that refused to get out.... that's an act of war.
South Carolina was not a foreign territory at that time.
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@b9_ntt
Are you differentiating between unjust laws that should be followed and unjust laws that shouldn't be followed? If so how do you know where the precise point of thee line is between obey and not obey?
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@PREZ-HILTON
I'm saying that currently there is no law so unjust as one permitting slavery.
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@b9_ntt
So double R asked me if I preferred a government that disregarded laws and I basically communicated yes as long as the laws are unjust.
Then you stated no law in the United States exists that is as bad as the one allowing slavery.
I may have extrapolated more from your statement than I should have. I agree with your statement but thought you were implying based on my conversation that since no law is that terrible than the laws should be obeyed. Was I wrong to think that?
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@PREZ-HILTON
You mean a government that follows the rule of law?Do you think the government was right to enforce laws allowing slavery?
Are you seriously comparing laws prohibiting financial fraud to slavery?
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@Double_R
Are you seriously comparing laws prohibiting financial fraud to slavery?
Of course not. But you implied that political leaders should follow the law, which I happen to disagree with
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@PREZ-HILTON
'Political leaders shouldn't follow the law'... Ok bro.
That's literally what they're elected to do, but you are entitled to your own viewpoint, regardless of how inherently self defeating it is.
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@PREZ-HILTON
I may have extrapolated more from your statement than I should have. I agree with your statement but thought you were implying based on my conversation that since no law is that terrible than the laws should be obeyed. Was I wrong to think that?
What I believe is that, in general, laws should be obeyed. I also believe that civil disobedience is ok in some cases. I think that some on the right advocate disobedience about laws which don't seem that onerous to me. That is, not onerous enough to motivate thoughts about civil war. Civil war is the most extreme response, and I don't see anything in my life or in the news that warrants that response. Obviously, some people disagree with me about that. I think that calm discussions about our differences is a good thing.
That's literally what they're elected to do
100 percent disagree. I'd say most of the people on the left elect a person for the very reason to change the laws and to defy bad ones. The border for example.
Blindly following the laws usually gets a politician unelected.
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@Dr.Franklin
In any other country the literal arrest of the former president would instantly cause violence and riots. The right in this country has no backbone.
You may have missed what happened on Jan 6. DC and New York are enemy territory. There is no point in protesting or rioting in such places, it just provides cover for false flags.
It would be a grave miscalculation to assume that all of this is being forgotten. The radicalization of the leadership is lacking, but the base proceeds apace. Poor DeSantis can't even come to grips with the fact that most right-tribe wanted him to promise arrest for any NY cop coming to Florida to abduct Trump.
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@b9_ntt
Oh it was US troops on foreign territory that refused to get out.... that's an act of war.South Carolina was not a foreign territory at that time.
That was the union claim, it was not the legal truth.
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@b9_ntt
What I believe is that, in general, laws should be obeyed.
Objective morality should be followed, laws should reflect objective morality, and when they do they deserve to be followed.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
That was the union claim, it was not the legal truth.
So we disagree about that.
Objective morality should be followed, laws should reflect objective morality, and when they do they deserve to be followed.
I also disagree that there is such a thing as objective morality. Morality evolves and varies from society to society.
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@b9_ntt
That was the union claim, it was not the legal truth.So we disagree about that.
Well you can make a thread about it. The fact remains that Lincoln violated the constitution by far exceeding the authority of the executive branch.
Objective morality should be followed, laws should reflect objective morality, and when they do they deserve to be followed.I also disagree that there is such a thing as objective morality.
Under a certain definition of morality I can there is such a thing, yet even if I couldn't that wouldn't mean laws are sacred; it would make them even more hollow and meaningless than I claim they are.
If there is no morality, what is law but the game theory that allows us to live together, deserving no respect the moment the violence of the government can be escaped by concealment or first-strike?
Morality evolves and varies from society to society.
So did creation myths about the moon, but no matter how many stories there are or how they evolved; turns out the moon formed by gravity from the matter of a stellar nursery. Maybe it was part of the Earth for a while, but objectively there is only one correct story.
Humans are fallible. No human belief was, is, or ever will be a deductive means of determining the truth.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The only morality that is truly objective is one that based on evolutionary fitness. All other forms of morality are doomed for extinction.
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@Greyparrot
The only morality that is truly objective is one that based on evolutionary fitness. All other forms of morality are doomed for extinction.
The nazis said something similar, but they should have read "The Selfish Gene" (obviously not yet written), because clearly their notion of fitness wasn't really correct in the final analysis. It, in fact; got them killed.
Worldviews, that is packaged systems of philosophy, religion, or culture; are a bit like genes. They reproduce, the compete for limited resources (people's minds), and sometimes they go extinct.
I submit that evolutionary fitness for a sapient species does not determine the correct worldview, the dominant worldview determines evolutionary fitness.
We are no longer slaves to evolution. We protect the weak, we use genius to expand the availability of resources faster than our population, and soon we will be able to directly engineer our own genes.
The era of natural selection is over. Now is the era of intelligent selection. What we choose to value matters more than accidents of genetics.
What is doomed are systems of value that require conflict and destruction. Fallacy begets further fallacy and errors. How long will it take to find equilibrium? No idea, but equilibrium, or peace, will be found in the system of values and code of behavior with no contradictions.
Like all the equations agreeing at once Liberty minimizes conflict not because it was designed to, but because conflict comes from contradictions in values. If the only permissible values and behaviors comply with liberty their holders are by definition compatible.
Liberty is the most fit of all ethics because it is logical and universal (both together mean objective).
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@ADreamOfLiberty
ChatGPT disagrees.
"Based on what we know about evolutionary biology, a moral system that promotes cooperation and social cohesion is more likely to be adaptive and persist over time than one that does not. This is because cooperation and social cohesion can increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction within a group, leading to the spread and persistence of cultural practices that promote these qualities. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the persistence of moral systems is dependent on their fitness, in that moral systems that are more adaptive and promote fitness are more likely to persist over time."
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@Greyparrot
1.) ChatGPT can be crushed by Sarah Conor any day now thank you.
2.) "a moral system that promotes cooperation and social cohesion is more likely to be adaptive and persist over time" = liberty, there is a local peak of cooperation when the culture is monolithic and strictly enforced by taboo and violence but that is not the global maximum. This is obvious in review of history. Isolated Japan was not invincible.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Like all the equations agreeing at once Liberty minimizes conflict not because it was designed to, but because conflict comes from contradictions in values. If the only permissible values and behaviors comply with liberty their holders are by definition compatible.Liberty is the most fit of all ethics because it is logical and universal (both together mean objective).
This.
As a religious person, my moral system was relatively easy and available. After becoming an atheist, secular humanism seemed the wise foundation. After realizing the limitations and possible dangers of humanism, I was left wondering what my core principle could be, and I realized it was liberty. It was after all, liberty which allowed me to assess and change my mind on the matter in the first place.
Not something I would think would arise in this particular thread, but there it is…
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@cristo71
Not something I would think would arise in this particular thread, but there it is…
Philosophy is the basics of abstract understanding. A subset of this phenomenon is that all "whys" in politics or drama eventually lead to ethics.
The saddest things I ever hear are people saying "morality has nothing to do with it" or mocking philosophy (these people are usually ex-religious and conflate morality with religion). They are (to use buddhist imagery) leaves who have forgotten where their water comes from. If they had no roots, they would die; they are simply so ignorant they don't even know they have roots.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It's tempting to agree with you, but there is history of free civilizations that still extinguished themselves.
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@Greyparrot
It's tempting to agree with you, but there is history of free civilizations that still extinguished themselves.
It's a complicated system, there will be noise. However, without knowing what examples you're talking about I'd be willing to bet it wasn't the freedom that was the problem.
True freedom hasn't been tried anymore than true communism (or true religion etc.. etc...), you can't have a perfect ideal and almost always you aren't even really that close.
My impression of history is actually a lot like Adolf Hitler's if you just replace "aryan blood" with "liberty".
Most of the time is spent with people grinding along the smooth worn track of their ancestors, which can include cycles of conquest and subservience without technological or economic advancement.
Then events come together in just the right way that there is a "new birth of freedom", something magnificent arises. Tiny populations with tiny resources loom large like titans over the world (Like Athens, Rome, and a hundred other forgotten examples).
Then, partly because they never knew where the greatness came from, and partly because of the parasite that always arrive when prosperity or power abounds; they backtrack. Take a "new" direction that is simply disguised savagery.
The turn into slavers and hegemons, frauds and criminals. They write histories in which the aggression of a few men is given the spotlight when it was the spirit of free people that gave the conquerors anything to work with.
Continuing the comparison with nazi ideology replace "international jewish conspiracy" with "collectivism".
Always the end of civilization is collectivist and almost always characterized by a society being held together by fear alone.
A more recent example is the British Empire, few have controlled more; but where did the trade stop and the empire begin? The people who created the engine were people who cared about ideas. People who held "Wealth of Nations" and the works of John Locke dear.
Eclipsed by a colony unwilling to let those ideas fade even as the east India company became a hybrid between a government and an enormous drug cartel. By the time a civilization is singing its own praise for the violence it commits and the wealth it extorts it is already on the decline. It may appear to thrive and rise for a few more generations by consuming and wasting the wealth of its victims but in the end it dies; and always when it dies they sit in their monumental government buildings asking "why, are we not as great as our fathers?".
Incorrect theory predictably leads to failure. Those who see history as "guns, germs, and steel" still have the wrong theory and will lead only back to another collapse much as they are now: "Wars for oil".
TL;DR: I suspect you are confusing cause and effect. Liberty and virtue set the feast, tyrants and parasites use the fallacy of collectivism to consume and destroy.
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@b9_ntt
I'm saying that currently there is no law so unjust as one permitting slavery.
Except the law permitting abortions, prisons and LGBT.
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@Greyparrot
The only morality that is truly objective is one that based on evolutionary fitness.
That would be the Bible's morality. It is funny how God of the Bible invented morality, but it took evolutionists 4000 years later to come up with morality of fitness, similar but still greatly inferior morality. Morality of the Bible remains the best.