[quote]forlife wrote:
Sometimes reducing a person’s ability to choose is justified in the name of compassion.[/quote]
I don’t want to have compassion for you. I hate you and I want you to die without healthcare of a curable form of cancer. Fucking asshole.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Zeke wrote:
To call Rand the “Marxists of the Right” is just wrong. She did not see class warfare as a proper way to judge a society.
She - and her legions of followers - see the same Marxist narrative in play: an “oppressor” class uses immoral power to deny the “oppressed” their rightful Utopia. For Marx, the people with the immoral power were the Capitalists - for Randians, public power.
Regardless, humans are reduced down to pure economic automatons that need to have their naked economic interests liberated from someone unfairly standing in their way. Randians reduce Men down to rank materialists - same as Marx.
America has been as far towards anarchy as would allow an effective government, allowing as much freedom for the individual as possible, while resisting the slide towards totalitarianism.
Completely false.
America is slowly sliding towards totalitarianism. I urge you to not side with those that would encourage this.
Your false choice aside, not all of those that reject the radical liberarianism of Ayn Rand’s coffeehouse abstractions and the like have any interest in statist totalitarianism.
In fact, they believe the opposite - that the juvenile infatuation with an inhuman cult of “liberty” is just as quick a catalyst to the dreaded totalitarianism as the most committed socialist platform. I believe that - nothing makes the case for Socialism better than the foolish bromides of the anarchist, the radicla libertarian, and the Randian.
Ayn Rand took a good idea - that totalitarianism, even the “nice” kind, will always find opposition in the people it purports to control and thus spells its own doom - took it to radical degrees, marketed it as philosophy, and (intentionally or not) created a cult following that insists that we can foist a system of ethics/politics that completely ignores Man’s true nature into the real world.[/quote]
How is this completely false? The first government was the Articles of Confederation. These proved to weak to be an effective government, and were replaced. To weak, in other words, to close to anarchy. So a second government was formed under our current Constitution.
This was a stronger government and was a republic. Somewhat closer to the totalitarian side of the field but still very far from it.
Ayn Rand aside, the republic that is the United States set the stage for some of the greatest advancements in the history of mankind. Personal liberty to be free from unnecessary intrusion into a persons innate desire to pursue their own ends has proven the most successful in history.
We are slowly eroding those freedoms in the name of ‘social justice,’ and in doing so we are moving towards totalitarianism.
I fear we will find ourselves in a democratic dictatorship before my lifetime is over. I urge you to not side with those that would encourage this.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Zeke wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
America has been as far towards anarchy as would allow an effective government, allowing as much freedom for the individual as possible, while resisting the slide towards totalitarianism.
…
How is this completely false?
America has never been “as close to anarchy” as would be earthly possible. States have had public morality laws since before the Republic was born - just one example.
That isn’t to say America has not and does not have a high commitment to individual liberty. But the country has never “brushed up” against “anarchy” - and we are better for it.[/quote]
I said; “America has been as far towards anarchy as would allow an effective government.”
I did not say, "“as close to anarchy” as would be earthly possible.
All governments range from anarchy, the rule of none, to totalitarianism. America is closer to the anarchy end than the totalitarian end. It is slowly moving towards the totalitarian end. I am opposed to that, just as I would be opposed to moving to far towards anarchy. I believe we would all benefit from the reduction of control our federal government has over our lives.
I believe all problems should be solved as close to the local level as possible.
I agree with you that anarchy is not a viable, and we are better of for not approaching it.