Why so many bleeding-hearts?

[Traitorfish]

Well lets have a look. In 2012 we got patroitic about the Jubilee which I suppose is an institition but it's a family too. I think there is sufficient cross over in that regard. In the Olympics the sentimentalism was focused on real human atheletes achieving things - bettering others - thats quite a positive and right wing thing to do. What else did we do this year? So far, it looks like right-wing sentimentalism also captures humanity too. Plus, whats so wrong about feeling for an instituion? After all, the left is madly, head over heels in love with the NHS, it's absurd - it can do no wrong. So I guess i disagree with your premise. Both the left and right get hard-ons for preferred institutions and people, seems plausible to me.

Would any give a damn about the Queen and her freakish brood or about the silly running-around-throwing-things-and-going-"hyup" people if they weren't draped in the Union Flag? It doesn't seem particularly likely, given that that their thousands of families of posh mutants going completely ignored, and that the silly running thing happens all the time but we only bother to pay attention when it's the Lympics, or, to a much lesser extent, the Commonwealth Games. And, by the same token, would anyone much care about the NHS if it had not and did not provide real benefit to people they know and care about? In my experience, they would not, any more than they would care about Inland Revenue or the Foreign Office. So I would argue that my initial formulation is correct, and that all you have shown is that, for the right, people are the means to the glorification of institutions, while for the left, institutions are the means to the helping of people.

You already know why. If you reject property rights out of hand, as you do, defending my position based on pro-property reasoning is pointless. So I don't really see why I should bother.

The simple answer is, you aren't really free if you can't choose not to associate with people you don't want to associate with.

Why not?

 

[GhostWriter16]

So all laws should be gentle suggestions?

Utilization of force is acceptable in defense of yourself or other people. It is unacceptable to protect people from themselves or to forcibly take what rightfully belongs to them without just cause.

 

[Traitorfish]

Utilization of force is acceptable in defense of yourself or other people. It is unacceptable to protect people from themselves or to forcibly take what rightfully belongs to them without just cause.

Why's that?

If you're going to keep making these absolute assertions, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to keep questioning them.

 

[GhostWriter16]

That's not just a small part of my philosophy though, that's the entire core of it. Its almost lilke asking me why murder is wrong.

 

[Traitorfish]

Okay: why is murder wrong?

 

[GhostWriter16]

If you can't accept something that basic, I don't think its worth talking to you

 

[Traitorfish]

It's not about whether or not I accept it, it's about where you can justify it. A belief held for spurious reasons remains spurious even if it happens to coincide with the truth.

 

[GhostWriter16]

It aggresses against the property right of another person to his life. I don't like generalizing it to the nitty-gritty like that (Obviously stealing life is worse than stealing property) but that's really what it comes down to.

 

[Traitorfish]

Why is that wrong?

 

[Peck of Arabia]

Right, if we're going to do libertarianism, let's do it properly!

Murder is wrong because it infringes on the right of the other person to live (that most fundamental right); the essence of John Stuart Mill and his "Harm Principle" in On Liberty. Also common sense.

Your right not to be offended does not trump the Sanctity of Private Property; 3rd in John Locke's "Big Three" of Life, Liberty and Property stated in his Second Treatise of Government

Power is submitted to the state, by the governed in the Social Contract on the grounds that the state will not infringe on said rights. The state should not, therefore, intervene and impinge on private property because of what an individual thinks and (back to JS Mill again, this time "Tyranny of the Majority") certainly not to crush minority opinion - no matter how unsavoury and repulsive that opinion may be. And don't get me wrong; racism is abhorrent.

Interestingly, too:

Locke also said that any government that does infringe these rights is fair game for a popular (bourgeois) revolt. But that's another issue ENTIRELY

[/Devil's advocate]


and with that, I'm going to bed

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Why does bourgeois equate with popular?

 

[Peck of Arabia]

Why does bourgeois equate with popular?

Largely because "popular revolt" had a ring to it and I needed to specify the aims of the revolt because it directly affects it's legitimacy. The fact it read that way was coincidental/my bad

According to Locke; Revolution for social equality and economic justice is wrong but political equality, justice and liberty is right.

 

[Traitorfish]

Right, if we're going to do libertarianism, let's do it properly!

Murder is wrong because it infringes on the right of the other person to live (that most fundamental right); the essence of John Stuart Mill and his "Harm Principle" in On Liberty.
...
Your right not to be offended does not trump the Sanctity of Private Property; 3rd in John Locke's "Big Three" of Life, Liberty and Property stated in his Second Treatise of Government

Why? All you're really offering by way of justification is reference to Locke and Mill, but one could just as easily reference Gentile or, I dunno, Skeletor, and it's not apparent that they'd be any less valid an authority.

Also common sense.

Hardly admissible in this context.

 

[Lord of Elves]

It aggresses against the property right of another person to his life. I don't like generalizing it to the nitty-gritty like that (Obviously stealing life is worse than stealing property) but that's really what it comes down to.

Is literally everything about property with you?

@Mr.Dictator, laws only exist for brown people.

 

[Quintillus]

It aggresses against the property right of another person to his life. I don't like generalizing it to the nitty-gritty like that (Obviously stealing life is worse than stealing property) but that's really what it comes down to.

I agree with Lord of Elves. It's nonsense trying to say that staying alive is congruous to keeping possession of some piece of property. It's an existential question, not an economic one.

More generally, I think you're likely over-applying your favorite philosophy. When you are applying one overarching explanation to everything, "oversimplification" should spring to mind. I know people in Real Life who tend to do this with concepts such as opportunity-cost. They can apply it to a lot. But even they would likely admit that sometimes you do things just because you want to do them, not because opportunity-cost tells you its advantageous. Similarly, most people are not going to be thinking about property rights when someone is waving a butcher's knife in their face.

 

[Zelig]

I know people in Real Life who tend to do this with concepts such as opportunity-cost. They can apply it to a lot. But even they would likely admit that sometimes you do things just because you want to do them, not because opportunity-cost tells you its advantageous.

That's in no way incompatible with measuring opportunity costs, you can apply arbitrary value to things because you "want to do them". (And in fact, you must such arbitrary value, greater than any opportunity cost.)

 

[Leoreth]

How can the same entity that makes property possible violate property claims anyway?

 

[WindFish]

How can the same entity that makes property possible violate property claims anyway?

You're assuming that Lobertarians think logically about their positions.

 

[holy king]

That's not just a small part of my philosophy though, that's the entire core of it. Its almost lilke asking me why murder is wrong.

is tyranicide wrong?

 

[Leoreth]

I recall that he endorsed a Lincoln assassination.

Which is an awfully utilitarian consideration now that I think about it.