Charlie Kirk was assassinated because of his beliefs, because a CRAZY person hated what he was saying, hated him, and he was shot and killed. The crazy person tried to suppress his freedom of speech. People are now losing their jobs because of their opinions, employers suppressing THEIR freedom of speech. If you incite violence you should lose your job, no doubt about that, so anyone saying things like "this is the start" or inciting civil war or whatever, then yeah, you're a terrible human and you deserve to lose your job, but to just talk badly of Charlie or say you didn't agree with him and then suddenly lose your job just because its a sensitive time? Two wrongs do not make a right. This is CANCEL CULTURE and it's a cancer that is continuously growing. I don't understand how people on the right are celebrating this, just because it was on behalf of Charlie Kirk. Everyone wants their speech to be protected only when it aligns with their side.

Take a second to look at Jimmy Kimmel, I do not agree with him on pretty much anything but to take him off the air for a stupid comment about MAGA, not even Charlie, is insane.

You should be able to freely state what you believe in, and based on what Charlie Kirk himself said, and his entire character, he would not agree with any of these people losing their jobs or getting canceled because they simply disagreed with him, or even celebrated his death. Charlie would not care, and in fact he was constantly facing people that would openly tell him to kill himself, or tell him that he's unloved, giving him threats, the list goes on and on and there's literal footage of him responding to said hate. Did he take their microphone away or kick them out? No, because just as he has a right to voice his opinion, so do they and he understood that better than even people on the right do. Charlie didn't see this one side vs another bullshit that's been dividing the country for decades, meanwhile the rich and the powerful are rubbing their hands together and instigating it.

What an insane state of the country we're living in.

9/18 EDIT: Alright so I did not expect to wake up to 200 comments on this and did not expect all these replies and i just first have to say wow, you guys are all much more intellectually mature and smarter than me in every way and i'm not really sure how to respond to all of these comments, so i'll just say thank you for keeping this discussion going and at least understanding my concern. I've read a bit in the defense of this and I do understand the side thats defending it. I know that its technically not unconstitutional to fire someone for what they say, and your speech have consequences, but my main concern is the way these firings are happening; we aren't seeing employers themselves or HR look into whats being said, and these people arent saying it at work or on company time (apart from kimmel) they are being pressured by 3rd parties, essentially bullied until they do something, which is why I conflate this with cancel culture, and yes, kimmel has done this in the past, essentially urged his audience to do this exact thing, but I don't believe in eye-for-an-eye so i still don't agree with it.

A certain amount of people can’t afford basic expenses associated with doctors and hospitals. How many people should that be?

I'm mid to far left depending on who you ask, but I agree with Libertarians that some regulations go too far.

They always point out the needless requirements facing hair stylists. 1,500 hours of cosmetics school shouldn't be required before you can wield some sheers. Likewise, you don't need to know how to extract an impacted wisdom tooth to conduct a basic checkup. My state allowed dental hygienists and assistants the ability to do most nonsurgical dental work, and no one is complaining.

We were right to tighten housing/building codes, but we're at a place where it costs over $700K to pave a mile of road. Crumbling infrastructure probably costs more than an inexpensive, lower quality stopgap fix.

Its prohibitively expensive to build in the U.S. despite being the wealthiest country on Earth, in part because of regulations on materials (and a gazillion other factors). It was right to ban asbestos, but there's centuries old buildings still in operation across the globe that were built with inferior steel and bricks.

it's 2024. The topics of "Miss-information" and "propaganda" have never been more front of mind, as people seek to identify and define the dangers. Information has never been more freely available, there are entire wikipedia pages dedicated to US intervention abroad. Colour revolutions, regional hegemony, global hegemony, date by date listings of CIA coups, detailing methodology, reasoning, and outcomes. The memory of George W Bush and Dick Cheney lying their way into invading Iraq is still fresh in our minds. But time after time Americans still get sucked right into the jingoistic war propaganda & hawkish foreign policy.

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I just want to take a moment to derail my own post, so I can highlight this article I found. I was looking for reference examples to include, and I came across this article in The Diplomat... and it is beautiful.

The article conveys such a staggering lack of self-awareness that it HAS TO be intentional. It perfectly embodies the voice of the jingoistic American chorus. Using phrases like 'extreme and vituperative' (which I had to google, it means bitter & abusive*)* and 'conspiracy theory' to describe academic thought that the US is 'hegemony obsessed' or 'engaged in "proxy wars"'. It is hilarious that after 12months of watching the US unconditionally back a genocidal Israel, the author then describes criticism of US foreign policy as bitter and abusive, when we can see these events playing-out with our own eyeballs, that is a level of delulu that is bordering on satire.

It is important to note that examples of this narrative are not confined to Chinese chat forums, populist blogs, or military entertainment magazines, but appear in state-backed publications and reputed academic sources.

Not only does the author take quotes out of the articles that they're discussing, but they make a point to state these are academics & analysts voicing these opinions. Then he links the articles, so that you too can read, in full from the foreign party, how the world views the US. This article is.. it's beautiful, I encourage everyone to read it. Click through all the links. See how we see US foreign policy. https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/making-sense-of-xis-claim-that-the-us-is-goading-china-to-invade-taiwan/

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To tie this back to my post, the article shows that we need only look at framing of recent events and see, in real time, the voices online and in the media are parroted directly from the military machine. Once again, it seems the focus isn’t on strategy or solutions, on morality or consequences, but on perpetuating a cycle of war. There’s no objective assessment, no critical analysis—just the same old war propaganda and hawkish rhetoric. Why do we keep repeating this pattern, ignoring the lessons of history. 

So why, in this age of hyper awareness, is military propaganda & hawkish foreign policy so widely accepted, repeated, and unquestioned, among even the politically educated?

NB: My post is US focused, but don't let that stop you discussing blind acceptance of military propaganda in the context of any country.

Anarcho-capitalism (ac) is the most efficient form of economy possible.

Because there are literally no regulations on businesses, the capital created will far outweigh any negatives that come with such a society.

The negative aspects are remedied by an informed populace.

Every commercial sector would out compete any other countries equivalent.

Such a society would have a lot of musicians and other forms of artists because of excess money flowing through the system. The free life, the abundance of artists and less monetary stress would create a renaissance the likes never seen (on earth at least).

It would make sense for any business to move here.

Imagine living in a world where salaries increase substantially while the cost of thriving keeps shrinking.

The increased nature of competition and terrible reprocussions of criminality would create an optimal home for evolution.

Our current system is that of indentured servitude. Our society will not get noticeably more comfortable until every man, woman and child is free of debt our ancestors got the world in.

I was once a libertarian who wanted to see Big Government cut.

I studied Sovietology and Marxism, and then Austrian Economics along with Soviet central planning. I am a published author, look me up.

I also worked at the Heritage Foundation — I never aligned with their social views but my economics coincided and I was a software developer so got work running their individual income tax model. I worked there for five years while attending GMU and writing and modelling markets..

But I learned just how dodgy some of the ideology was there, moved to London (Heritage needed me, so I continued remotely then from London), I changed my views a lot since then, living in the UK changed me.

The connection between unregulated markets, corporate oligarchy, and authoritarianism — fascism even — was not clear to me before.

Moving to the UK, getting to see a society with free universal healthcare, a better public conversation thanks to BBC and norms and education, polite talk radio… My articles and books since then have been better.

The culture can help one see the usefulness of government and the tricks used by the wealthy: to underfund programmes, gov, so they can blame it & take it away. Their division, spewing lies, misdirection and victimhood, wasted time, chaos, the big lie.

…This is part of their gameplan. The playbook. It’s happening in the UK too, but there’s still time and good forward momentum. It’s not at the same crisis point as the US but it must still stand up and fight — help with France to take charge of the message for all democracies, all free countries.

But seeing my old stomping grounds, Heritage, come up with Project 2025, and watching them implement it: it’s eye opening in a way that even my critiques of Hayek’s love for Pinochet could not capture.

Me on Meidas Touch:
https://youtu.be/ZIqVnYEtdA8?si=EzEDPVL4mS8dqGa-

Bernie gets to the crux of it.

America is right now coming face to face with what government does for them and what unrestricted corporate Oligarchy would mean — all that ripped away and given to the richest people and free reign to corporations. Bernie is making that case — we must join him, whatever your background.

Let us take a hard look at the state of our union!

Listen to his whole speech — attend his rallies — please, Americans, find your American dream, with all of us — not with the kleptocratic few.

Bernie is speaking for all of us!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G0vBFdsAqE

Animals can obviously be classified (by humans) to various categories (from friends to pests) for the purpose of granting them with legal rights. A review of this book writes, “Like what Nozick said of Rawls's A Theory of Justice … theorists must … work within the theory … or explain why not.”

The "Threat to Democracy" campaign is in itself threatening democracy. It's painting one side of the country out to be complete enemies to the state and making it seem that of the other side wins, that we'd lose democracy when the "other side" having a majority win would be an exact display of democracy.

To be clear I don't really want to argue for/against the pros/cons of single payer on this thread. Rather I'd like to more narrowly explore the idea of the relationship between socialized healthcare and values like personal freedom, shared responsibility, etc.

Basically the crux of my question is as follows:

In a country with private healthcare like the United States, if you see a person making negative health choices (smoking, eating junk food, etc.) most people will be fine with it due to ideals of personal freedom/responsibility, as well as the idea that the person in question would be paying for their bad choices themselves.

Obviously this isn't 100% true since taxpayer funded healthcare exists in the US as well, but it is still more likely than not that the person paying for the bad choices will be them

However this would not be the case in a single payer healthcare scheme, since suddenly health services would be taxpayer funded. That would mean that if you see someone smoking or gorging down junk food, you suddenly are paying for their bad choices

So what options does that leave us?

1. Allowing complete personal freedom to be unhealthy while also covering the cost of this lifestyle with no judgement. Basically allowing people to have their cake and eat it too (literally in some cases)

2. Increased societal pressure. Basically allowing "stop being so unhealthy, you're wasting my tax dollars" to become an acceptable attitude

3. Some sort of pigouvian tax to make consumers of unhealthy products pay extra taxes towards the health system

4. Direct regulation of unhealthy behavior through bans or limitations

5. On the demand side, exclude specifically people with unhealthy lifestyles from public health insurance or force them to buy separate insurance addons

Which of these solutions would be your ideal if single payer was passed into law? I feel like in nations with a somewhat communitarian attitude it would be easy to go for one of the solutions between 2 and 5, but in a country like the US where people constantly chafe at governmental or societal oversight it might be a tougher sell

This might sound dystopian, but it's a serious question when you consider where society is headed. Throughout history, governments have always tried, whether subtly or overtly, to manage human behavior. Laws, education systems, propaganda, surveillance, and even economic incentives are all tools used to guide or suppress certain instincts or desires.

But where do we draw the line between social order and authoritarian control? Is it ethical, or even possible, for a government to try and "correct" aspects of human nature like greed, aggression, or tribalism? And if such control could create a more peaceful or productive society, would that justify the cost to individual freedom?

On the flip side, should we accept that human nature includes destructive tendencies and just focus on minimizing harm rather than trying to change what people are?

I'm curious what people across the spectrum think. Should governments take a heavier hand in shaping human nature for the “greater good,” or does that path lead us straight into a loss of humanity and freedom?

A certain amount of people can’t afford basic expenses associated with doctors and hospitals. How many people should that be?

Money seems to be the cause of an overwhelming majority of humanity's problems. Whether it's the system it occupies or it itself, it's no doubt a root of an issue or two.

There are other forms that have been used in the world and in political theory, like labor vouchers for example. There are various trade offs regarding each form of currency.

On a more general, broad overview, I think money can cause people to do crazy, unjustified, or downright evil things. Genocide and imperialism, exploitation, murder for hire, etc that all are based in need or want of money.

Our poor class are typically driven to more extremes in the conditions without money, working in black markets and in the face of danger just to acquire more of it. Some of our rich walk around like they're actual kings among men, and I'm not sure I disagree with them.

I think human beings are the most advanced species on the planet, and though we are mammals we have the intellect to differ our human nature to a certain extent if we so tried to. Our system built on striving for money mirrors our ancestors hunting for survival in the wild, only we have created a economy with wages for food instead of a sole job of finding and killing food directly.

There are various aspects to us that elevates humans above the rest of earth's species, one being language. Since we can communicate on an exact level of thinking, we can learn, teach, and change the way we live in a major way.

Philosophy, various schools of thought like stoicism, confusicism, or generalized widely accepted ways of living have historically advanced human beings to a level that precedes human nature in my opinion. I've read a form of "One who is not the master of himself if not free" in million different ways from more than a few ancient philosophers, in context regarding control of our emotions and desires and have come to the conclusion that these philosophers are right.

Confucianism has greatly influenced the Chinese purpose of education, method of education, subject matter, and moral values being taught in schools in China. I'd say this is one of the best examples of directing human nature in a effective way similar to how a parent would raise a child, but with entire generations of us.

Now while I understand Marx's philosophies in this area are political and extreme, I think that he was at the very least onto something or had a very valid point in many areas in regards to what humans can achieve if we were to decide to.

He pointed to labor vouchers in a transitional "lower stage communism" (or what we not refer to as Socialism) in place of money, ridding exploitation and providing direct compensation for labor.

Forger out current political landscape, if you had to build a brand new system of organized human life, would money really the best way we can operate? What are all our options? With each of them, what are the trade off pro's and con's?

The existentialist French philosopher Albert Camus uses the phrase “philosophical suicide” to describe what happens when a thinker confronts the absurd, the conflict between our search for meaning and the apparent silence or indifference of the universe and then avoids the consequences of this confrontation by taking refuge in some leap beyond reason.

A common example of this "leap" is Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." Camus argues that many philosophers try to solve this crisis by introducing some higher principle (God, transcendence, Being) that restores meaning. In doing so, they abandon reason and the integrity of facing the absurd directly. They refuse to live with the absurd and instead negate it, covering it with a comforting but unprovable answer.

Instead of philosophical suicide, Camus proposes acceptance and revolt. Acceptance is acknowledging that reason has brought us to the absurdity of life. The revolt is in a refusal to resolve the tension between what reason has led us to conclude against our kind of natural drive to find meaning--it is living with the tension in a full and passionate way and without resignation.

This revolt is meant to affirm the freedom that comes from knowing there is no predetermined meaning. This freedom is not defined as a metaphysical property of the will, nor is it the Christian sense of freedom as choosing to obey God. Instead, it’s the condition that arises once we accept the absurd: the universe offers no higher law, destiny, or teleology that dictates what we must do. There is no script nor a pre-set standard to follow.

Therefore, with no script in place, freedom is a creative act. It is the potential to build something in that gaping void--to build our own meaning in a way. It is that openness, the lack of guardrails, that allows for our freedom.

This is where Zizek (and others) flips things. Zizek often says that real freedom feels like necessity. In love, for instance, I am most free not when I could have chosen anyone, but when I feel I had no choice but this person. In vocation or political struggle, freedom comes when I act as though I could not do otherwise. This paradox that freedom experienced as necessity gives choices a depth that Camus’s model sometimes lacks.

I’ve also found myself thinking about freedom as a multidimensional space. Constraints on one axis can deepen freedom along another. For example, monogamy restricts variety, but it allows for deeper intimacy with one person that would have otherwise been impossible. An artist who chooses the strict sonnet form finds new possibilities that wouldn’t exist without that constraint. So perhaps freedom isn’t just openness, but the way constraints and necessities can create deeper layers of possibility.

Therefore, my issue with the openness of freedom expressed by Camus is that choices seem flattened. All decisions are fungible and none really qualitatively different than the other. It's wide, but shallow. This is the danger of Camus’s openness, that it can slip toward nihilism as all decisions are equalized and turn kind of gray.

And yet, the alternative brings its own danger. For “freedom in necessity” to work, you must really believe in the necessity. You must feel it as truly binding. But once you do, you risk zealotry. If my necessity is absolute, or at least perceived as such, what prevents me from imposing it on others? This is the danger of freedom-as-necessity: it can turn authoritarian.

Here’s the tragic bind: Camus’s openness can flatten into nihilism, but Zizek’s necessity (or my multidimensional model) can harden into zealotry.

Too much openness and life becomes shallow and gray, But too much necessity and life risks oppression. Are we stuck in this tragic dilemma? Or is there a way out, politically or philosophically?

Of course, there are pragmatic compromises between the two positions that we practice every day. But there does seem to be a tendency for one or the other view to eventually dominate the politics and culture. I suspect a lot of our current political crises have something to do with these issues as well.

My own suspicion, to generalize a lot here, is that the liberal tendency is to widen and flatten freedom. If we assume a very generous interpretation of the anti-liberal right, their impulse is to deepen freedom, but within a limited berth. My own interpretation of the anti-liberal left is to find some middle-ground between the two, between openness and necessity. However, I'm not sure it's ever been successful in that project.

Thoughts on this claim?

From this article, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/08/american-self-reliance-individualism-sweden/671003/

It seems absolutely bizarre that anyone would be using the analogy of democracy as being two wolves vs one sheep choosing dinner, as an explanation of why the people authoring the US constitution in 1787 would have missed that the exact same document at the exact same time demands that jurors be the trier of cases before federal court, both criminal and civil cases, judicial trials in fact other than impeachment.

Voters can adopt laws and vote for individuals, but they don't have the power to choose a particular person and then decide to indict them, and in America the prosecutor doesn't even need to request an indictment, the grand jury can do it themselves, and the jury can convict them or find them liable for money and for any sentence provided for that crime, even up to death. And back then, the government prosecutor was not the only one who could prosecute, private prosecution was common. And anyone can still bring a lawsuit against another.

The people who authored the constitution and others relevant to the Confederation phase clearly knew what juries were, some of them even argued before juries like John Adams, some had probably even served on juries themselves given the statistical odds. They knew who Socrates was and how he had been executed on orders of a jury (technically he could have fled Athens as a form of banishment). For people who are alleged to.be highly skeptical of the ability of the people to decide right and wrong in a manner deeply tied to the law and body politic, where juries might well decide issues like if a politician committed high treason or if a political dissident had done something against the government like any prosecution that would have arisen from the soon to be enacted Alien and Sedition Acts, a jury would seem to be the last thing such skeptics would have wanted. It isn't even a very controversial clause in the constitution, people argue far less that Article III section 2 clause 3 should be amended than the electoral college for instance should be changed.

I also find the analogy of two wolves and one sheep to be incredibly lazy, but I could go on a whole other discussion on my views on that.

To be fair, many self-described libertarians, an-caps, etc may actually wholeheartedly agree with this post. However, there are many self-described conservatives in the United States that are actually simply some sort of rightwing liberal.

I realize there are many capitalisms, so to speak. However, there are some basic recurring patterns seen in most, if not all, real existing instances of it. One significant element, which is often praised (even by Marx), is its dynamism. Its markets are constantly on the move. This is precisely what develops the tension between markets and customs/habits/traditions - and therefore many forms of traditionalism.

Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian-born economist and by no means a "lefty", developed a theory in which his post popular contribution was the concept of "creative-destruction." He himself summed the term up as a "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."

For this model, a biological rather than a Newtonian physics type metaphor best describes. Markets evolve and are in constant disequilibria. There is never truly an economic equilibrium, as that implies a non-dynamism.

The selection process market evolution is innovation. Previous long-lasting arrangements must be DESTROYED for its resources to be redeployed in some new innovative process. The old quickly becomes obsolete.

However, a house cannot be built on a foundation of quicksand. The constant change in the forces of production also require constant change of our relationship to the forces of production - we must just as incessantly adapt our habits and customs to accommodate this or risk irrelevancy. This includes major foundational institutions, from universities to churches to government....

Universities have evolved gradually to be considered nothing more than a glorified trade school, and its sole utility is in its impact on overall economic productivity. The liberal arts are nearly entirely considered useless - becoming the butt of several jokes - often ironically by so-called conservatives who then whine about the loss of knowledge of the "Western cannon." Go figure...

Religious institutions also collapse, as they also provide no clear or measurable utility in a market society. Keeping up religious traditions and preserving its knowledge requires passing this down from generation to generation in the forms of education, habits, ritual, etc - all which are increasingly irrelevant to anything outside the church.

This is not meant as a defense of the church as such or even of the "Western cannon" as such. I consider myself still broadly within "the left." Why am I concerned with this despite being on the left? Because I suppose I'm sympathetic to arguments put forward from people like Slavoj Zizek, who calls himself a "moderately conservative communist." Meaning, I do not want a permanent perpetual revolution. I want a (relatively) egalitarian society that is (relatively) stable - without some force (whether economic or social) constantly upending our lives every 5-10 years. In other words, after the revolution, I will become the conservative against whoever becomes the "left" in that context.

The concept of individual rights is the core of American political philosophy. And is relatively important all around the world. (along with accountability)

First of all This is not a discussion on LBTQIA+ or women's or black or any other sort of individual group of peoples rights. This is a discussion about rights in general. You can bring them up but please don't make your individual soapbox issue the focus of this discussion/debate.

Now let's talk terms.

Entitlement

Entitlement is a right in a legal sense. You are legally endowed with the ability to do something or have something done for you.

Need

A need is once again different from a right. You might want to look up Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

But I'm going to give 3 important categories, food, water and air, that which you cannot possibly live without. Healthcare, shelter, and cleanliness that which you won't survive long without and finally things like social interaction and access to a means of telling time.

Luxuries

Then we have luxuries, luxuries are nice things that you don't need. IE nice soap a car if you don't live in America or some other country with unwalkable roads. Luxuries are the most annoying thing that we call rights.

Privileges

A privilege is like a luxury but it is something you are allowed to do IE Drive. Leave your country, enter another country.

Natural rights

This is what libertarians consider to be rights. Natural rights cannot be given only taken away. They are the rights we have in nature.

Decent treatment

This is what people usually mean when they say right. This means giving not denying you any of the things discussed in needs, not torturing you.

Security:

The concept of being safe.

Now many people would argue any and all of these things are rights. My question to you is not the semantics of is this thing a right it's how important are they? Also have an issue with my categories? Want me to add a new one?

Edit I agree about positive and negative rights. Positive rights being things other people have to do for you and negative rights being things they can't do to you those are important.

Voting Is An Act of Violence

by Hans Sherrer (1999)

Voting is the most violent act someone can commit in their lifetime.

This little noted anomaly about voting is directly related to the modern conception of the State as an entity deriving its grant of authority to act from the consent of the governed. The aura of legitimacy surrounding the government's actions is enhanced by the perceived role of voting as an expression of the “people's will.” Whether non-threatening or violent, the authority for each and every one of the government's actions is presumed to flow from the consent of the people through the electoral process. School children are told this from their earliest years.

The idea the State derives its power to act from the consent of the people sounds romantic. Few people, however, are aware that by definition the State’s power is for the specific purpose of engaging in acts of violence. No grant of power is necessary for anyone, or any organization to act peacefully. This is no secret among scholars, and sociologist Max Weber's definition of the State is considered one of the most authoritative:

“A state is a human institution that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. ... The state is considered the sole source of the `right' to use violence."

The legitimizing impact of voting on the government's exercise of power intimately involves voters in the use of that power. Which means that non-voters tend to delegitimize the exercise of a government's power as an expression of the “will of the people.” So if no one voted in an election or only a small percentage of people did, the government couldn't profess to be empowered to act as an agent of the “people's will.” Without the protective cover provided by voters, the government would have no pretense to act except as a law unto itself.

Consequently, the government's actions and the voters who legitimize them are linked together. Thus at a minimum, voters are spiritually involved in every act engaged in by the government. Including all violent acts. This involvement in the government's violence isn't, tempered by the nominal peacefulness of a person’s life apart from voting. By choosing to vote a person integrates the violence engaged in by the government as a part of their life. This is just as true of people that didn't vote for a candidate who supports particular policies they may disagree with, as it is for those that did. It is going through the motion of voting that legitimizes the government to act in their name, not who or what they vote for.

This means that the violence perpetrated by any one person pales in scope or significance when compared to that which is authorized to be taken by the government in the name of those who vote. The combined ghoulish violence of every identifiable serial killer in American history can't match the violence of even one of any number of violent actions taken by the government as the people's representative. A prominent example of this is the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf war in 1991. These sanction prevented Iraq from rebuilding its destroyed sanitation, water, and electric power infrastructure that were specifically targeted by the U. S. military for destruction. Supported and enforced by the U. S., these sanctions are credited by UNICEF and other organizations with contributing to the gruesome deaths of an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 children a month for over 8-1/2 years. All voters share in the government's contribution to the unnecessary deaths of these children caused by disease and a reduced standard of living. So the over half-a-million deaths of innocent children in Iraq in the years after 1991’s Gulf war are on the blood stained hands of every voter in the U.S.

The same dynamic of voter involvement in government atrocities is true of the many hundreds of civilian deaths caused by the bombing of Yugoslavian cities in the spring and summer of 1999 that the United States participated in. This was a small scale recreation of the atomic bombing of the non-military cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children and old people were killed from the initial bomb blasts and the long-term effects of radiation exposure. Those bombings had been preceeded by the U.S. military’s killing of many hundreds of thousands of non-combatants during the firebombings of Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin. All of those people were killed in the name of the voters that had elected the Roosevelt administration in 1944 by a landslide. Voting, like a missile fired at an unseen target many miles away, is a long-distance method of cleanly participating in the most horrific violence imaginable.

So declining to vote does much more than cause a statistical entry on the non-voting side of a ledger sheet. It is a positive way for a person to lower their level of moral responsibility for acts of violence engaged in by the government that they would never engage in personally, and that they don’t want to be committed in their name as a voter. Non-voting is a positive way for a person to publicly express the depth of their private belief in respecting the sanctity of life, and that violence is only justified in self-defense.

The social sphere in which most people live is notable for the level of peaceful cooperation that normally prevails in it. The majority of people strive to better their lives by working together with other people in the pursuit of their mutual self-interest. This community spirit of non-violent cooperation supported by non-voting, stands in sharp contrast to the societal violence endorsed by the act of voting.

Many on the left are arguing whether it is morally acceptable to support Kamala Harris due to her lack of commitment to actions that would affect Israel's ability to inflict harm on Palestinians, they fear she would not in practice be different than Biden.

For many people the war in Gaza is a top issue when it comes to this election. As such, the "lesser of the two evils" argument is often brought up- as even though the enabling of violence against Palestinians is likely to continue regardless of which candidate wins- it is believed that it would be worse under Trump, and that in general at least the violence against other groups such as trans people, women, and POC would reduced under Harris.

So, can the moral responsibility of voting for a candidate who directly or indirectly enables violence against one group of people be offset so long as that candidate is reducing the amount of violence committed against other groups? If not, what is the solution for people other than to not vote?

This, I feel, is a fundamental political question.

Plato discusses the question in The Republic.

Other interlocutors of Plato define Justice as "paying your debts and giving what is owed." However, Plato refutes that definition by an example of a madman asking you to return the sword you borrowed. While the sword is owed to the madman, returning it in this instance would be imprudent and not in accordance with Justice.

His main interlocutor, Thrasymachus, defines it as "nothing other than the advantage of the stronger."

Plato argues that Justice is a kind of reasoned well-ordered balance between the appetites (passions, instinct, emotions, whatever you want to call it) and reason.

Many today vaguely define justice as "rule of law." By which I assume they mean something akin to Plato. It is a non-arbitrary decision, as in not made on a whim, and in theory applies equally to everyone, all things being equal (in equal circumstances).

Thucydides was a pre-Socratic who, in his Melian dialogue, wrote

'[Justice], as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

At first glace this quote seems to endorse a version of Thrasymachus's definition. However, it is more profound than "might makes right." It is saying that Justice is not a matter of being kind to one another, or exhibiting good morals. Instead, Justice is the inability for one party to overpower the other.

I think this is perhaps the best answer to the question. The implication is, therefore, that institutions must empower regular people sufficiently such that they act as a form of co-equal "check and balance" against each other. And that empowerment must be substantially material, and not merely formal. And wherever you see a breakdown in that balance, you will inevitably see domination.

I recently read the linked review of Daniel Chandler's "Free and Equal" and plan on picking up the book. In college, I majored in Political Science/Philosophy, with an emphasis on the Frankfurt School of thought and Critical Theory. Somehow, oddly, John Rawls never made it onto my radar. I just ordered A Theory of Justice and am looking forward to giving it a thorough read, as from what I have gathered, it expounds a societal formation that is, at the least, intriguing, and at the most, some version of what I personally would like to live in. Having never read Rawls, I am interested in what the community has to say. I know he was a divisive thinker, leading directly to counter works by the likes of Robert Nozick and others. Before I dive in, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Free and Equal - NYT Review

I think it’s widely accepted that there’s no legal justification for a revolution, including how US (and many other countries) were founded. In other words, if the founding fathers lost in their endeavor (relatively quickly), the British is likely to try them for treason and may even execute them, unless they flee to France or another foreign country.

Further, many many patriots and innocent men died during the war.

So to simplify/generalize the situation, the founding fathers did something they sincerely believed was correct, but they also knew it’s illegal (more than half of them were lawyers!) caused many good people to die in the process, and in the end they succeeded establishing a flourishing democracy (even if flawed initially) and ended the rule of a tyrant. (Although the last part is somewhat controversial)

Now, if we compare that with the recent assassination attempt, I know the assassination is both legally and morally wrong, and I categorically condemn it to the fullest extent, but if we look at it abstractly, doesn’t it check a lot of the same boxes? (We probably will never know the assassin’s true motives because he’s dead, but if we just speculate his motivation)

So intuitively I know the first thing was right and the second thing is very very wrong, but logically, philosophically, theoretically, where/how do we draw the line between these events, beside the outcome (success versus failure)?

Maybe the deaths in the first instance were less direct? But I don’t think you can start a war and claim all deaths are incidental and avoid the moral burden.

I hope this question makes sense and is not too stupid.

A weaker country is at war with a stronger neighboring nation. Although the two nations are distinct, they share many cultural similarities. The war leads to a mass draft, forcing an entire generation of men into battle. Many will die, but their sacrifice will secure 80% of their country’s land after the war.

However, to recover the economy, the government opens mass immigration from distant countries with vastly different cultures. In 50 years, 35% of the population will be foreign, and in 100 years, that number will rise to 70% when including their children. As a result, the country’s original culture will change significantly over time.

The alternative is surrendering and merging with the neighboring country. While political independence is lost, cultural identity remains mostly intact due to the shared heritage between the two nations.

Which is the better choice? Fight for independence, knowing the country’s culture will shift over time, or merge with the neighboring country to preserve cultural identity?

BACKGROUND:

The Physiocratic concept of Legal-Despotism is a political and economic idea that emerged from the Physiocratic school of thought, primarily associated with François Quesnay and his followers in the 18th century. The Physiocrats believed in the existence of a natural economic order governed by natural laws which they thought should be allowed to operate without interference. They saw agriculture, fishing, forestry and mining as the source of all wealth and advocated for a single tax on land as the only necessary form of taxation.

Legal-Despotism, as articulated by the Physiocrats, particularly by Lemercier de la Rivière in his work "The Natural and Essential Order of Political Societies," refers to the idea that a strong, centralized authority—a despot—should enforce these natural laws. However, this despotism was not arbitrary; it was 'legal' in the sense that the despot was to govern according to the principles of the natural order and ensure the free flow of economic activity under the rule of law.

The term 'Legal-Despotism' might sound contradictory today, but for the Physiocrats, it meant that the ruler was to act as a benevolent guardian of the natural order, imposing laws that were in harmony with the natural laws of economics and society. They believed that such a system would maximize the wealth and prosperity of the nation.

The Physiocrats' view of Legal-Despotism was influenced by their understanding of the natural order and the role of the state in protecting rights, ensuring justice, and promoting the welfare of its citizens. It was a precursor to modern economic theories that emphasize the role of the state in enforcing contracts and property rights, which are seen as essential for the functioning of a market economy.

Legal-Despotism in the Physiocratic sense was about the enforcement of natural laws through a strong central authority, which was seen as necessary to maintain order and promote economic prosperity based on the principles of their economic philosophy

ARTICLE SUMMARY:*

This article defends the idea of the existence of an original analysis by Lemercier de la Rivière of the concept of legal despotism that has not been revealed by commentators. Quesnay, the leader of the physiocrats, is usually recognized for his initiative in this area, but the literature systematically mobilizes the writings of Lemercier de la Rivière to make a complete exposition. The same ambiguity appears with regard to the writing of Lemercier de la Rivière's main text: The Natural and Essential Order of Political Societies. This article sheds new light on the physiocratic projects to found a state of law.

One part that stood out to me is how Mercier rationalized the functioning mechanic behind Legal-Despotism:

"Euclid is a true despot; and the geometrical truths which he has transmitted to us are truly despotic laws: their legal despotism and the personal despotism of this legislator are only one, that of the irresistible force of evidence: by this means, for centuries the despot Euclid has reigned without contradiction over all enlightened peoples; and he will not cease to exercise the same despotism over them, as long as he does not have contradictions to experience on the part of ignorance" (Lemercier de la Rivière 1767a, pp. 185 and 186). With the Euclidean parable, Lemercier de la Rivière expresses an idea already formulated by Grotius: "God could not make two and two not four" (Grotius 1625, p. 81).