History The Rights Of The Court To Punish.

[Scottty]

Lol! America was built on a foundation of freedom? They certainly turned that way over time but the initial work, the actual foundation on which the country was built, was the work of the British colonisers. The subjects of the British Empire, who achieved the success they did because people, materials and wealth were provided by a decidedly unfree form of government and society.

Then, they declared their emancipation, insisted that no one had the right to treat them that way and they deserved life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... And then set about importing other people, who were treated worse than cattle and worked to death, stripped rather starkly of life, liberty and happiness along with everything else.

But don't worry, it was only about a hundred years before they got over that whole thing. I think it's safe to say though that between the English colonial period and the hundred years of slavery, we're well past the point where you can claim America is built on a foundation of liberty!

Dude, you keep saying "they" as if the first colonists who went to North America to find religious freedom, the "Founding Fathers", and the Southern slaverholders were all the same group of individuals. They were not. There was some overlap of course, but not all of what later became the USA had slaves, not at all.

If you were a "good old boy" from the South, and someone raised the matter of how your "peculiar institution" fitted in with the whole Unalienable Human Rights thing, you had some options:

• Deny that those rights applied to Negroes
• Deny that slavery was a violation of those rights
• Deflect the question somehow
• Refuse to debate the matter and simply threaten violence if they bring it up
• All of the above

But those guys were never the whole of the population, even in the South.

 

[LindyAF]

But don't worry, it was only about a hundred years before they got over that whole thing. I think it's safe to say though that between the English colonial period and the hundred years of slavery, we're well past the point where you can claim America is built on a foundation of liberty!

America was build on a foundation of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

 

[Cherico]

Lol! America was built on a foundation of freedom? They certainly turned that way over time but the initial work, the actual foundation on which the country was built, was the work of the British colonisers. The subjects of the British Empire, who achieved the success they did because people, materials and wealth were provided by a decidedly unfree form of government and society.

Then, they declared their emancipation, insisted that no one had the right to treat them that way and they deserved life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... And then set about importing other people, who were treated worse than cattle and worked to death, stripped rather starkly of life, liberty and happiness along with everything else.

But don't worry, it was only about a hundred years before they got over that whole thing. I think it's safe to say though that between the English colonial period and the hundred years of slavery, we're well past the point where you can claim America is built on a foundation of liberty!

you as a person are a perfect example of what Im talking about.

equality and liberty are not the same thing, your conflating the two in your mind because your entire world view, the entire foundational way you as a person operate is based on equality. In fact the two ideas are at some level mutually exclusive and always have been.

This is also why you will envitably look upon any historical society and culture and see it as intrinsically evil, because your value system cant create a viable government because of the law of oligarchy. Either your dream government is corrupted by having to have some one in charge to actually make things semi viable or it ends up in a blood soaked nightmare world.

Its very tragic and in a lot of ways I honestly pity you.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Lol! America was built on a foundation of freedom? They certainly turned that way over time but the initial work, the actual foundation on which the country was built, was the work of the British colonisers. The subjects of the British Empire, who achieved the success they did because people, materials and wealth were provided by a decidedly unfree form of government and society.

This would be the Genetic Fallacy, to my understanding. The origin of a thing does not have inherent bearing on the worth of the thing itself. This would in fact be a prime example of prejudice, as it is a conclusion without analyzing the thing itself.

Then, they declared their emancipation, insisted that no one had the right to treat them that way and they deserved life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... And then set about importing other people, who were treated worse than cattle and worked to death, stripped rather starkly of life, liberty and happiness along with everything else.

Funnily enough, the Northern states that didn't have slave plantations took less than three generations to decide that slavery did, in fact, breach the notions of unalienable rights. Only ones who held onto that when the country moved beyond its immediate origin were those with a vested interest, pretty much specifically the plantation owners and other wealthy of the South.

The plantation owners made their money off cotton, which was otherwise economically non-viable and the import ban written in the constitution surprisingly accurately predicted when it would have stopped being worth it even with slavery if it weren't for the Cotton Gin and legume regeneration.

Meanwhile, the poor white farmers outside the cities? Yeah, they despised slavery a lot of the time. It made things vastly less stable for them, because they had to not merely make a living, but enough of one to resist the plantation owners trying to buy out more land for their cash crops. Very few groups appreciated the "Cotton Kings" of the South.

 

[stevep]

you as a person are a perfect example of what Im talking about.

equality and liberty are not the same thing, your conflating the two in your mind because your entire world view, the entire foundational way you as a person operate is based on equality. In fact the two ideas are at some level mutually exclusive and always have been.

This is also why you will envitably look upon any historical society and culture and see it as intrinsically evil, because your value system cant create a viable government because of the law of oligarchy. Either your dream government is corrupted by having to have some one in charge to actually make things semi viable or it ends up in a blood soaked nightmare world.

Its very tragic and in a lot of ways I honestly pity you.

Cherico

So your saying that your idea society has no human rights and protections other than for those who have the power to impose their will on everybody else and remove the same from them? Its always the problem with people of extreme views that they see anything other than what they want as an 'opposing' extreme.

If you don't have some opportunities for the bulk of the people to make their lives better then you have a system that is both inherently unstable - as the vast bulk of the population have little/no interest in maintaining it - and highly inefficient. The US in its first ~100 years had the advantage of a lot of land they could take from others so people unhappy with their lot in the 'settled' areas could escape westwards but that made it extremely exceptional and that period has long past. As such ordinary people need to get some decent level of say in the way their governed. Most especially to protect against the prime internal threat to them of the very wealthy using their power to ride roughshod over them. That's why for all their failings the centre left in the US is markedly more popular than the hard right, which is the current divide there. Despite some appealing to populism which has gathered some support from elements left behind - who are in that position largely because the oligarchy have cut off options for them.

That doesn't mean equality of wealth, which is a stupid idea. But a greater equality of opportunity is the important issue that gives both some real reason for the bulk of the population to buy into the system and also a chance for them to boost their society more effectively.

Steve

 

[Cherico]

Cherico

So your saying that your idea society has no human rights and protections other than for those who have the power to impose their will on everybody else and remove the same from them? Its always the problem with people of extreme views that they see anything other than what they want as an 'opposing' extreme.

If you don't have some opportunities for the bulk of the people to make their lives better then you have a system that is both inherently unstable - as the vast bulk of the population have little/no interest in maintaining it - and highly inefficient. The US in its first ~100 years had the advantage of a lot of land they could take from others so people unhappy with their lot in the 'settled' areas could escape westwards but that made it extremely exceptional and that period has long past. As such ordinary people need to get some decent level of say in the way their governed. Most especially to protect against the prime internal threat to them of the very wealthy using their power to ride roughshod over them. That's why for all their failings the centre left in the US is markedly more popular than the hard right, which is the current divide there. Despite some appealing to populism which has gathered some support from elements left behind - who are in that position largely because the oligarchy have cut off options for them.

That doesn't mean equality of wealth, which is a stupid idea. But a greater equality of opportunity is the important issue that gives both some real reason for the bulk of the population to buy into the system and also a chance for them to boost their society more effectively.

Steve

I am trying to explain to explain some very basic ideas to you.

Liberty, Equality, Stability they are all core values, they are all mutually exclusive and any society you create is a series of trade offs between them. Your primary core value is equality and your entire world view and sense of morality is built upon it.

Equality is not the end all be all of life, in order to have a stable government of any kind some one has to be in charge. You surrender equality for stability when you do this. When people are allowed to make their own decisions in life there will be unequal outcomes because some people make bad decisions or value different things.

There is no perfect society what happens is we all argue and bicker about what trade offs we make to get what, and this bickering will never end because these are core values.

 

[stevep]

I am trying to explain to explain some very basic ideas to you.

Liberty, Equality, Stability they are all core values, they are all mutually exclusive and any society you create is a series of trade offs between them. Your primary core value is equality and your entire world view and sense of morality is built upon it.

Equality is not the end all be all of life, in order to have a stable government of any kind some one has to be in charge. You surrender equality for stability when you do this. When people are allowed to make their own decisions in life there will be unequal outcomes because some people make bad decisions or value different things.

There is no perfect society what happens is we all argue and bicker about what trade offs we make to get what, and this bickering will never end because these are core values.

That's a good image of your position then as your making a number of assumptions that don't fit me at all. I don't view society as perfectible, just that we have a moral responsibility to try and get things right. Also that there are different views of what is right but that assuming that you have a monopoly of it and everybody else is wrong I tend to find is a sign that your way, way off target.

Plus if you have actually read my post you would see that what you mean by equality is not what I was proposing, nor do I consider it "the be all and end all of life" as you seem to suggest oligarchical privileged is. My argument was that a society that doesn't provide a reasonable level of equality of opportunity is both inefficient because its denying itself a hell of a lot of resources and unstable because by being unfair and contemptuous to the bulk of the population you give them no reason to support the status quo and plenty of reason to oppose it.#

If there is little of either liberty [for ordinary people not just a wealthly self-identifying elite] nor equality of opportunity then stability goes out the window pretty damned quickly. You could have such a system lasting in much earlier ages simply because people have little chance or knowledge of alternatives but even then some long lasting empires could fold very quickly when they came under pressure.