Defining the noun "Liberal"

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Nov 18, 2016.

  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Tiassa obviously refuses to argue, and continues cheap polemics which are not worth to be answered.
    In a liberal society, a contract simply does not exist if it is refused. It starts to become a contract only after acceptance.
    Yes. But this presupposes a contract, an accepted one, and is about the question if the acceptance is valid. A contract which does not have even an invalid acceptance is not a contract at all.
    I think we are not lawyers here. If I say "signed", that means accepted by above sides, ok?
    As if this would change something. If this evidence is considered sufficient or not already does not depend on the guy who has a lot of contracts with arbitrary whites, but no contracts at all with blacks. All what matters is that it may be considered as sufficient evidence, and in this case he may be punished.

    So, people may be punished for simply using their freedom of contract, in the original, classical liberal version of "freedom of contract". You defend this obviously anti-liberal situation, which proves that you reject classical liberalism.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Sure. So? If it was refused, no contract exists. If it was prevented by third parties from being accepted or offered, it does not exist. If it was obtained by fraud or deception, it is null and void and does not exist. That is part of the definition of a contract under liberal governance.
    Bringing a contract into existence - most people say "accepting" or "signing" or some such term, you yourself refer to someone "signing a contract", which you now declare to be impossible - does not presuppose that the contract already exists.

    Many and complex laws, under any form of government that enforces contracts, address the existence of a "valid" (actually existing, in your terms) contract: among them are the legal considerations that define valid acceptance and therefore the existence of a valid contract. If the acceptance of a contract is invalid of course the contract is null and void - cannot be enforced, does not exist accept as a deception or fraud. That's normal.
    No. Use some other more accurate term - you have established a pattern of leaning on such semantic tolerances to muddy issues and obscure your errors of reasoning (like you just did with "acceptance" of a contract).
    The problems with your incoherent formulation of liberal principles, "classical" or otherwise, are well established. Your inability to handle physical reality in your formulation - the fact that your principles self-conflict and lose consistency under certain physical circumstances - is the relevant problem here.

    Nobody is being punished for using their freedom of contract here. There is no freedom of contract that denies other people freedom of contract, under liberal governance. The question of whether some proposed manner of making contracts would do that is one of fact, as well as abstract law. Government is of actual regions and living people - these freedoms exist in reality, or they don't exist at all. Under liberal governance they exist equally for everyone.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2017
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    You want to play with words? Of course, "signing a contract" means to put a signature under some paper, which contains some text. And which, before there is this signature on it, has no legal relevance at all.
    It seems more reasonable to stop this argumentation at all. The issue is clear and obvious: If some government "regulates" the right not to sign a contract, there is no freedom of contract, because freedom of contract presupposes that one cannot be, even in principle, obliged to sign or accept any contract. So, no such regulation is allowed in principle.
    If one can be punished for signing a lot of contracts with white people but not a single one with blacks, one can be punished for applying the own freedom of contract. That's obvious, a triviality.

    Freedom of contract, of course, allows to deny other people to have contracts with oneself. If these other people have other possibilities to sign contracts or not is irrelevant.

    It is completely clear now that you reject freedom of contract in its usual, classical liberal meaning, and support some totatlitarian, "American liberal" notion named "freedom of contract" in some Orwellian newspeak.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Already replied to, several times: you are confusing yourself.

    There are two possible interpretations of your muddle there:

    either you are referring specifically to the rejection of an offered and (if accepted by the other party) valid contract, which one party has already in effect "signed" and the other party is considering, in which case none of the US laws in this matter are involved and your objections are irrelevant,

    or you are talking about regulating the terms under which a contract can be made, actually exist as a valid, enforceable, non-fraudulent, liberally governed contract, in which case you are being silly: such regulation is necessary for the simple existence of contracts at all, under liberal governance. They define the term "contract". And in the US they include a ban on racial discrimination in making the contracts involved in commercial dealings with the public. (To prevent denial of freedom of contract to black people, under the liberal principle of equal rights and freedom under the law).
    So? That's not the case, here.
    It's not irrelevant in physical reality. That's where you have failed to account for physical reality. And nothing applicable to governance can fail to account for physical reality.
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    It is your approach which is muddled. Contracts exist without government. Regulations may be used, in a liberal state, to define which contracts can be enforced. If this simple concept is beyond you, and you think that contracts exist only because there is a government to define what it is, this is your personal etatist confusion.

    It is a nice try to justify arbitrary regulations, including regulations which obviously and openly violate freedom of contract, to claim that without any regulations where would be no contracts. But it works only if you argue with other etatists.
    ?????? Decide yourself if it is the case or not.

    It was you who has explained me in detail how these evil racists violating the "rights" of black to get contracts with white racists will be identified and punished. Based on the fact that they have a lot of contracts with whites but no contracts with blacks. Which is completely unproblematic if there would be freedom of contract, but is evil and illegal in your beloved "liberal America" and should be punished.

    Reread the argumentation where I have explained that, else, it would be easy to circumvent such laws - by simply not telling that one refused to sign contracts with blacks because they are blacks, but, instead, giving no reason at all, or, if this is not allowed by the regulation, giving fake reasons. You have, there, explained in detail that the totalitarian police state cannot be circumvented in such an easy way. Part of this explanation was that, whatever these evil racists claim, the facts that they sign a lot of contracts with whites but none with blacks is what proves that they have violated the law, and this leads, of course, to punishment.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No, they don't. Promises exist, customs exist, contracts do not. The existence of contracts is the existence of enforcement, accountability to others in fact - government.
    Those regulations define which contracts exist under that government, remember? (As you explained above, without "acceptance", or "signing", or "agreement", no contract exists - those are all defined by government).
    That is, as explained, evidence. One item, often useful, of evidence. Do you understand the concept of evidence?
    That bit of childishness and inexperience is sufficiently mocked - I keep telling you to pay attention to the actual examples presented to you, and you keep ignoring them and blithely spouting ignorance in public.

    In America this is not hypothetical, not speculation, ok? You are being informed about something. Pay attention.
    That is still false. Every time you post it. In my neighborhood, for example, lots of businessmen do little or no business with black people without the slightest liability - no black people walk through their doors, simply because few black people live nearby.

    As already pointed out to you several times now: Evidence is not proof, and these matters are argued before juries in the US.

    What's odd here is that you have your neighbors on a jury, overseen by a judge bound to the Constitution, acting as a totalitarian police state. It's possible, I suppose - You were the guy who was going to have reputation among your neighbors enforce contracts against the rich and powerful, maybe you think your neighbor's opinions and an all-powerful police state really are the same thing.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2017
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    LOL. But, ok, in this case it makes no sense to talk about liberalism at all with you. But, iirc, you similarly claimed that without government there is no property, not?
    No, they define which contracts will be enforced under that government.

    But, whatever, in this case it makes no sense to continue a discussion. The difference is far too big to reach any meaningful understanding.
    Of course. That means, if the evidence shows that some evil white racist has made contracts with other evil white racist subhumans, but none with black humans, they will be punished. Any difference?
    So what? I have not written any "always". That some of those evil racists go away unpunished is not a point at all.

    Note: If there is freedom of contract, they have the right to behave in this way. That means, even if only a single one is punished for doing this, there is no freedom of contract.

    Don't forget, in Stalin's Soviet Union there have been a lot of political jokes, a whole culture of political jokes. This does not prove that there was freedom of speech at that time. In a famous anti-Stalinist book there was a scene were the NKWD guys were telling each other such political jokes. With the phrase "a very good joke - I have given ten years for it". You understand this logical difference between having a right to do things and sometimes getting away with doing such things?
    Sometimes you get away with your joke about Stalin, not enough evidence, sometimes not. Evidence is not proof. So, complete freedom of speech in Stalin time.
    Meaningless point. But the jury decides only if you have violated a law or not. They are not supposed to decide if the law is totalitarian or not. If the law tells, that for a joke about Stalin you deserve imprisonment, your jury will nonetheless decide if you have made a joke about Stalin or not. And the Judge will care about them following the Stalin constitution. As today they decide if you have had a picture of a naked child behaving indecently. Jury trial does not prevent totalitarianism if the law is totalitarian.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Yep. Just possessions. I believe you countered by claiming that tribes don't have governments (or maybe that was Michael).
    No. This is important. They define which contracts exist. They define when two parties have a contract, and when they don't. The principle that all valid contracts must and will be enforced, equally and for or against everyone the same, is a liberal principle of governance - not a universal one.
    No, pay attention: the disparity of the contracting is itself the evidence, of something else, possibly.

    And it may not be - there must be an argument from it, to establish it as evidence of a violation of law. In itself, it's just some bookkeeping - means nothing.
    They haven't broken any laws. They have no liability, no guilt and - in their circumstances - no evidence of guilt.
    And they do, in the US, have that right. They are right down the street from me, exercising that right.
    Supreme Court Judge does that. And the lower Court judge, even the jury, can in fact do it as well (normally irresponsible of them, but unusual cases have occurred).
    No, they have to see proof beyond a reasonable doubt that you knew you had it and acquired it yourself. It's the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing - cornerstone principle of American law, installed by liberals.

    One of your difficulties in getting an accurate idea of liberal governance in the US, to the extent it exists, is that you harbor so many misconceptions about physical reality in the US - how things actually work. You don't have information, and you fill the void with presumption.
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    It is a universal principle that one has to hold contracts. It may be not enforced, but in this case it is nonetheless a moral obligation. Of course, for etatist sheeple, the notion of a moral obligation may not exist at all, it is reduced to follow the laws of the state. But people usually have moral rules. And these moral rules tell them, quite universally, that contracts have to be fulfilled.
    Yes, evidence of them being evil subhumans who have to be punished. Whatever. What matters is that if some white racists uses his freedom of contract to sign contracts with a lot of whites, but not at all with blacks, he may be punished.
    Whatever, if simply realizing the own freedom of contract gives sufficient evidence for violation of some law, that means there is no freedom of contract in this society.

    Stalin's laws have also not violated freedom of speech, the speech was only evidence that somebody is an enemy of the people.
    I know - jury nullification. This possibility is what could be, really, a protection against totalitarian law - if people would use it. And this is, in fact, the main point of the Magna Charta, that it has not only introduced jury trial, but given the jury to reject laws proposed by the King.

    But most of them are not even aware that there is such a possibility.
    As if it would make a difference. Imprisoning people for owning pictures is evil, unjust, horrible, and inherently totalitarian. Completely independent of the content of the picture.
    One of your difficulties is that you like to make accusations without even the slightest evidence to support it. It would be also very helpful if you, instead of making speculations about what I know, would simply talk about the facts. Note the main difference: If your claim would be true, giving the facts would allow me to correct my error. Simply claiming that I'm wrong gives nothing.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You aren't using the right English word. Moral obligations aren't contracts, in English, except in a metaphorical sense.
    Evidence of them having broken the law, possibly. Lawbreakers and evil subhumans are not interchangeable categories, in the US.
    There is, however, in the US, more freedom of contract for everybody with the law than without it. So you now have evidence that your formulation of freedom of contract is wrong, and that denial of freedom of contract to others cannot be the result of realizing one's own, under liberal governance.
    But imprisoning them for obtaining some pictures, in complete knowledge of what they are, is not necessarily evil etc - because they have knowingly enabled and supported and motivated the creation of them, which necessarily involved criminal and abusive behavior.
    Otherwise I tend to agree with you - witch hunting child pornographers is a dubious business, one to be wary of (it easily loses sight of the child's welfare, which ought to be primary), and the US tends to authoritarian error rather than libertarian.
    But if it doesn't make a difference to you, you can easily amend your claims so that they are not false and still make your point. Why not do that?
    That your claims about American government etc are replete with misconceptions, has support in more than slight evidence. And I quote it, most of the time, when attempting correction.
    That has yet to work. But I have patience.
     
  14. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Maybe this is not good English. But, sorry, I have not even tried to say moral obligations are contracts. The obligation to fulfill a contract is, even if not enforced by the state, a moral obligation.
    Of course, my use of "evil subhumans" is polemical. But in totalitarian societies like the US, the difference is not that big. Tiassa's attempts to present me as a racist has clearly a derogatory aim. And the aim of this law, which allows, under some circumstances, to imprison people for having contracts with whites but not with blacks, is to fight racial discrimination, not?
    How do you measure "freedom of contract"? Don't forget, for slaveholders the freedom was even greater, they have simply told a slave to do something and the slaves have accepted this offer. So, measuring "freedom of contract" by counting the possibilities to get things done is a little bit problematic.

    I have a simple measure. Is it possible that, at least under some circumstances, one may be penalized for realizing the own freedom of contract. If the answer is yes, then there is no freedom of contract.
    A cheap excuse in a world where the usual way to get them is to download them from some server for nothing. Moreover, to fight distribution of copies for free, also named piracy, is a known method to support a market. Ask the music and film industry.

    I see no reason to amend this claim. Imprisoning people for owning pictures is evil, unjust, horrible, and inherently totalitarian. It is a classical thought crime. This holds even if those who own the pictures are really bad guys, with really evil thoughts.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You don't. You just recognize when people don't have it, and if you want to govern according to liberal principles you see that they do.
    That's not a contract, under liberal governance (or most others) - as predicted, your basic confusion over the governmental role in defining what is and is not a contract has tripped you again.
    In non-totalitarian societies like the US, the difference is very large.
    No such law exists. Nobody is imprisoned for that - it's perfectly legal. You have been informed of that fact several times now - how many repetitions until it sinks in?
    The answer in the US before the law was yes for black people and many (even most) white people. After the law the answer was no, or at least much less often. Greater freedom of contract was obtained by the law.
    Don't change the subject: you were wrong in your description of how the law works. Again. Because you fail to correct them, these errors accumulate, and lead to nonsense about "totalitarian America" in your posts. Which in turn blinds you to the arguments around liberal governance with the US supplying examples.
    1) That isn't true, always (your lack of connection with reality once again cripples your imagination), and
    2) It doesn't happen, in your example here, in the US (barring witchhunting and miscarriage of justice). Knowledge of them and having acted to keep or obtain them must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
    3) you have said it makes no difference to you - why not avoid the false claim?
    It isn't a thought crime at all.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    You don't, obviously, get the point. In Stalin time nobody was imprisoned for using his freedom of speech. Some were imprisoned for being enemies of the people, and their speech was only used as evidence to prove this.

    You simply don't know the elementary techniques of totalitarian government, and seem unable to recognize them. And with your inability to recognize them, you have no method at all to defend yourself against such techniques.
    This is already no longer a text one can comment and argue about, it is a nice illustration of Orwellian thought.
    It isn't true, always??????????????? Let's spell this out: Imprisoning people for owning pictures sometimes is not evil, unjust, horrible, and inherently totalitarian.
    The point being? Does this make imprisoning people for owning pictures in any way better? Ok, the guy has known he owns the picture, and acted to keep it. This proves his evil intentions, evil thoughts. And allows to distinguish those with evil thought from those with good thoughts, who are victims of a subrogation or so.
    Yes, it is not a thought crime at all. Thought crimes do not exist at all. They are an invention of this bourgeois propagandist Orwell, with the aim to defame communist jurisdiction. In Stalin time, there has been no thought crime at all. All those imprisoned were real enemies of the people, and imprisoned with overwhelming evidence for their evil deeds, like for defamatory jokes about comrade Stalin.

    Here some quote from the Stalin constitution http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html#chap10
    To explain the point of this quote: I do not think that this article was not violated in the USSR. It was obvious to everybody. Including me, even if at that time I supported communism. But the techniques how to defend the (nonsensical) claim that it was not violated at all were also well-known. In fact, we have learned them. And they were the same techniques which you apply here all the time.

    The point that there is no freedom of speech in Soviet Union was as obvious to everybody with common sense as that there is no freedom of contract if a gay hater is penalized for not making a contract with a lesbian couple. For people who have no intention to lie, this is simply obvious. They may defend this - this is another question. I have defended communism at that time. But not by claiming that there was freedom of speech in communist countries, but by defending the position that giving people freedom of speech is, given the real circumstances of the Cold War, simply not possible.

    Similarly, I would not object at all, and have made this point sufficiently clear, that I would not object if you would openly reject liberalism. Or if you would openly support the point that some thought crimes, like being sexually aroused seeing pictures of sex with children, are so horrible that they should be punished, and, given that one cannot read thoughts, possession of such pictures should be sufficient to prove these evil thoughts. But please don't lie about this.

    Of course, I know that this appeal is hopeless. Totalitarian thought depends on lies, and it does not depend at all on these lies being obviously lies for everybody with common sense. Which is Orwell's point.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No. It proves his violation of the law, passed to prevent bad consequences of such actions.
    So? That's the opposite of the civil rights legislation - nobody is imprisoned for being anything, an enemy of the State or anything else, but for injuring their fellow citizens by acting in specific forbidden ways.
    I know when you are making false claims about US law and its workings in society. These seem to be central to your claims of totalitarian government in the US - which suggests those claims are false as well (I already knew that).

    All the stuff you have posted here about totalitarian government is familiar, although cartoonish (you omit key sophistications such as arbitrary enforcement and lack of fidelity to declared rule) - and I recognize its workings as you describe them, milder than Stalin of course, in several aspects of US society and political doings. But not the Civil Rights legislation - you are simply wrong about that. And the reason you are wrong seems closely connected with your errors of fact and description, your false claims of US physical reality. You don't seem to be able to comprehend the fact that black people in the US were and can be denied basic freedoms and liberties by certain white racist behaviors if that behavior is not prevented by law - that government according to liberal principles must establish them in the real world.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2017
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Owning pictures does not have bad consequences. Downloading them too. These are cheap excuses, not more. Their real crime are their evil thoughts looking at these pictures.
    And these guys are also imprisoned for distributing harmful anti-soviet propaganda, with the aim of destroying the Soviet Union. And conspiracy to do evil things.
    Of course, totalitarian propagandists always already know that their opponents are wrong. Surprise.
    I see it in a quite obvious way. Racism is evil, this is the ideology which rules, and your beloved law is a law to fight evil racism. The racist is (together with the sexual predator) the jew or the enemy of the people of this new totalitarism. Until now, yet much milder than Stalin. So, here we have agreement too. But conceptually this is the same. That the really dangerous new Nazis will not have brown shirts is an old prediction.

    If you want to see arbitrary enforcement and lack of fidelity to declared rule, do you really think it is hard to find them in actual US? I would start to look at what happens based on political correctness at universities ... But this would be another topic.

    Unfortunately, you seem unable to stop such BS.

    This is interesting, because, as the paragraph before has shown, you are not joepistole, but able to recognize and understand some things. Why you continue to do such nonsensical things? Acutally, my hypothesis is that you feel morally obliged to distance yourself from the political enemy. You don't have arguments, and you know this, and in a honest discussion you would have to admit this. But this would be politically incorrect, thus, you have to repeat, as a mantra, the politically correct belief. And attack me for being unable to understand this.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The process of many people acquiring them does, or so it is argued - crucially, because if it does not the laws become null and void.
    This is a matter of fact, and controversy, in the US - this issue you raise is a Constitutional one dependent on factual reality, and under current debate.
    You are completely correct that forbidding bad thoughts even in one limited arena would be a step toward totalitarian governance, rather than liberal, and the US is historically and presently vulnerable to that. This we fear. But it hasn't happened yet.
    A crime against the State, harm to the State, not an injury to identifiable citizens. If the State were a universal good, presumably beneficial, that would hold water - in the US, the State is only good insofar as it promotes the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the individual citizens, and not otherwise: fundamental and formal legal principle, written down and enforceable and enforced, sincerely, so far.

    Stalin's administration was therefore quite different, in principle as well as in fact, from the US situation. You can argue the principle is vulnerable to lies and propaganda, and the facts can change - this is true, but you must realize that what you are posting here would be part of that, rather than its opposition: your undermining of the Civil Rights defense of black people's rights and freedoms as harmful to the State's liberal principles of governance, for example. And in America, that is exactly how your arguments are presented, by the white racists who seek support of the State for their own privileges, and denial of rights to black people rather than liberal governance of the citizenry.
    That is a possibility, and many people in the US agree with that view (both some racists, who feel attacked, and some self-described foes, who feel righteous). When compared with the legal and governmental situation, both in principle and (predominantly, so far) in fact, it happens to be false. Racial bigotry in thought is not treated as an evil, for example, in the courts, but as a circumstance or opinion - like tire tracks at a crime scene, it is evidence established to argue from. Actions that injure fall under the scope of the law.
    Of course not, but they are not the defended norm of argument, established trend, or evaluative ideal yet. They have to be hidden, denied, or somehow obscured from the public view and the formal arguments (white racism a valuable means of doing that).

    As yet they are, still and (if we can hold on through the latest developments) continuing, dealt with as miscarriages of justice whenever recognized. The arguments and ideal argued toward is still in conflict with them.

    Recall the historical direction of the US - it was borne in slavery and industrialized under plutocracy, totalitarian governance was its norm. We are less than one complete generation from lynch mob racial oppression, from company towns paying in scrip, from thoughts such as communist sympathies being proposed as actual crimes.

    And the people in the US arguing, like you, that such miscarriage is normal liberal government and the way people (white racists, in particular) are actually being treated under liberal governance, are the overt enemies of liberal governance engaging in calculated and and agenda-driven propaganda.

    You have joined with fascistic propagandists here - even posted their videos, their revisions of history, reiterations of their most blatant and familiar deceptions. All while claiming superior propaganda assessment capabilities.
    They are not bs. You keep posting physical claims that are physically false, as if they were theoretical necessities. That means your theory is screwed up.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2017
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    No. Most of the people download their illegal porn in the darknet, for free. These free exchange platforms destroy any market, which is well-known, the music and film industry heavily fight against such platforms. Everybody who cares knows this, but this does not at all make that law null and void, because it is an ideal law for a totalitarian state. And, moreover, there is nobody ready to fight for such hated minorities. And, even more, it justifies home searches for almost nothing, as well as control of the internet.

    It would be really nice if you were right. But, sorry, we are not in liberal utopia.
    As if the Stalinist state would be a value in itself. It is only a necessity for the fight against capitalism. Once the communism is build, the state will die off.
    Not really. A liberal state would be, hopefully, qualitatively different. But this is a quite weak hope, I think finally it is an illusion. But the US is not at all liberal today, it is completely overregulated.
    Lol, I have to presuppose that you are right. Sorry, I defend the simple and clear principles of classical liberal freedom of contract. That means, if a white racist, however evil, wants to sign contracts only with whites, and not with blacks, this is his legitimate choice. His freedom of contract. US law is different, we know, you justify this with some unclear "civil rights" blabla, to continue this discussion makes no longer any sense.

    The principles of classical liberalism are certain and simple, and this simplicity gives some hope that it would not be easy to violate them in a constitutional state. The US is a counter-example. Ok, it was not simple, it has taken some time. But America is no longer the land of the free, but the land of the political correct. At least this is what its totalitarian elite wants.
    The problem are not (yet - be careful about hatespeech as well as hatecrime talk, this is an obvious way to introduce thought crimes into law) open legal persecution of racists by law. But, as we have seen here (but you deny), white racists already have no freedom of contract. This is a beginning, and the beginning is always the most problematic step for the antiliberal totalitarians.
    I know I'm stupid and a propagandist of evil forces, Tiassa and joepistole tell me this all the time, because they have nothing else to tell. But why you cannot do without such cheap attacks? You are, last but not least, able to make some meaningful arguments.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    That is irrelevant.
    That is also irrelevant.
    Yes, really. The two contrasting and opposed principles are fundamental to the rule of law, and make radical and dramatic differences in how laws are written and enforced in the US compared with Stalinist Russia.
    No, it doesn't. That is an error of reasoning, a mistake in your thinking, apparently rooted in your inability to incorporate physical reality in your formulation of liberal principles, and your ignorance of the physical reality in places like the US.
    You have formulated them incorrectly, forgetting that they are principles of governance - accountable to physical reality - rather than abstractions of law.
    I do deny that white racists in the US have no freedom of contract, and I have explained to you exactly where you went wrong in claiming that.
    You are now confused about what is "beginning", what the trend is and what stage the Civil Rights legislation represents - the political work of digging out from under the totalitarian oppression imposed by white racism in the US has taken more than 150 years, and is far closer to its end than its beginning.

    The anti-liberal totalitarians are not "beginning", in the US. They have been here from the beginning, using your arguments against liberal governance for more than two hundred years.

    And that familiarity of argument may be where people get the idea that you are one of them - a member of the political faction in the US that has for so long employed your arguments against the expansion of liberal governance in the US.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2017
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    No, it is not. Because all those who simply download some material, without paying for it, do not support in any relevant way what is presented on the material. The only objective thing which they do is to impose some costs for the providers of such forums. Even more, if they distribute the same pictures for free, they help to destroy the market for such materials. Because nobody pays for things he can get for free.

    The only thing which remains is that that they have evil thoughts.
    The argument you have named "irrelevant" showed that there was no such difference. So, it was relevant.
    Ok, freedom of contract means, in my opinion, that everybody is free to decide if he wants to sign a contract or not. The logical conclusion is that he is free to decide that he wants to sign contract with white people only.

    I know that in Orwellian states it is an error of reasoning to apply classical logic.
    Of course, from point of view of newspeak I have formulated everything wrong. War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.
    And white racists have full freedom of contract, because they are not allowed to refuse to sign, out of their racist principles, contracts with blacks.
    Of course, given slavery, the US was never liberal in the classical meaning. It can be named, at best, liberal for the subset of white men. And it was an important liberal fight to extend this to women and blacks.

    But there was also another anti-liberal direction, those who have fought against the liberal rights of these white men. In favor of an almighty state. These have had a hard time, but during the last years, Bush + Obama, they have won. If Trump will revert some of this is completely unclear, this was not an issue at all, except for his open violations of political correctness, which was part of the antiliberal Obama time.
    So what? I have also some ideas about you. This would not justify to present them here to defame you.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Not true. You overlook the various motives involved in the making of child pornography - they are the same as any other pornography.
    They increase the audience, and thereby encourage the prevalence of creation.
    They have made themselves an appreciative and encouraging audience for evil deeds, thereby abetting and participating in them.
    And in the opinion of people less confused, it means that under liberal governance everybody is equally free to actually make such a contract.
    But they are allowed to refuse to sign contracts with blacks - same as blacks are - for all valid reasons. And now they also can make contracts with blacks. Now blacks can sign contracts with blacks, and whites and blacks can contract with each other, where before they were prevented. This is in accordance with the liberal principle of equal freedom of contract, which was violated before.
    Trump is on the side of the almighty State folks, and that has been perfectly clear all along. His open violations of "political correctness" were, and are, in the service of arbitrary power and oppression of the targeted.

    Your view of "political correctness" is completely framed and limited by US rightwing authoritarian propaganda, btw. Note, for example, that none of the mainstream media routinely referred to Trump by the politically incorrect term "fascist" - Trump did not violate "political correctness", but hid behind it, used it to help conceal his ideology and agenda.

    Genuine opponents and critics of political correctness in the US - such as this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher - were not fooled.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2017

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