On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:03:57 -0500, Publius wrote:
> The Trucker
verizon.net> wrote in
> news:pan.2008.07.21.16.26.09.759246@verizon.net:
> >>> Ah, yes --- the "We know what is best for you" argument. Many people
>>> are too (dense, deluded, confused, brainwashed), or too ignorant (of
>>> the Will of God, "deeper reality", historical inevitability,
>>> transcendental truths) to know or understand what is good for them.
>>> Therefore we enlightened (priests, gurus, shamans, aristocrats,
>>> Illuminati, potentates, Fuehrers) must spare these hapless peasants
>>> the consequences of their ignorance and lead them along the path of
>>> righteousness (and if they resist our noble efforts, then to the
>>> gulag or the extermination camps).
>>>
>>> Congratulations. You have placed yourself in some notorious company.
>>
>> Nice try, but follow the link in my signature or read the actual
>> signature very carefully and slowly.
>
> I certainly agree with your TJ quote. The next question is, What happens
> when the disidents rebuff your "education," and indeed, dismiss your
> tutoring as mythology, delusion, or self-serving propaganda? Do you
> leave them in peace to live their lives in accordance with their own
> version of "truth," or send them to the gulag until they "come to love
> Big Brother"?
Follow the link in the signature for the answer. I will not be in charge.
__**WE**___ will be in charge.
>> While it is true that "good" is relative there are certain customs
>> that the vast majority would see as "good". These things are
>> therefore called "the common good".
>
> Then that would be a good for that "vast majority," and not a *common*
> good, wouldn't it? Calling it a "common good" would be inaccurate,
> wouldn't it?
No. It says that the "vast majority" will have defined the "common good".
Whether those that should be in the booby hatch disagree is actually
irrelevant.
>>> And if you declare something X to be good for P, then you need to
>>> cite the evidence supporting your claim. If the evidence is not the
>>> actions of P to secure X, then you'll need some other evidence. You
>>> can't merely declare X to be good for P arbitrarily (and expect to be
>>> taken seriously).
>
>> Nope. I do not need to do any of that. I have said what I want to
>> say and made my position quite clear. If you are having trouble
>> fitting it into the frame you have designed it is probably because you
>> have a personal problem that is very much related to your egoistic
>> view of the cosmos.
>
> Well, that clears things up considerably. You freely advance false and
> spurious claims because you do not believe yourself obliged to cite
> evidence or offer arguments for your claims, or to consider evidence or
> arguments contradicting them. You assert them dogmatically, in the hope
> they will be adopted and perhaps repeated by other free-lunchers in need
> of rationalizations. I.e., you are not a philosopher but a propagandist.
>
> Do you suppose TJ would count that as "education"?
I have made my position clear and debated the subject at length. I do not
seek your agreement. And your constant attacks are really just evidence of
your desperation.
>> It is actually not all that difficult. It is the sum of the opinions
>> of all concerned.
>
> The good cannot be summed across persons. There is a hierarchy of goods
> attached to each person --- an ordered ranking of things deemed good by
> that person. Goods can be compared, summed, and traded within a
> hierarchy, but not between hierarchies, because there is no common frame
> of reference. If you rely upon some such principle as majority rule to
> define a "common good," all you actually do is permit the good-for-some
> to trump, extinguish, or override the good-for-others: "Democracy is two
> wolves and a sheep deciding what might be good for lunch."
I have heard that stupid pronouncement many times before. And it does
actually obtain in an uneducated public with a and streamlined
relationship between the populous and the enforcement of popular law. Yet
it does not actually serve here, does it. In this regard for the
prevention of "mob rule democracy" we are very fortunate in the design
of our government. We have adequate checks and balances to ward off the
mob tendencies. It is unfortunate that we have allowed our government to
morph into its current state of fascist oligarchy.
> (That is why TJ, Madison, Paine, et al, urged a government with narrowly
> limited powers --- so that very few decisions fell within the scope of
> majority rule. In most areas of life, including their economic lives,
> each person could decide for himself what was "good," and pursue it
> freely --- the "pursuit of happiness").
Your interpretation of Jefferson does not coincide with mine. And his own
words indicate his desire for majority rule. The education of others will
have been unnecessary in a world where each individual makes up his/her
own societal rules.
>> I am very well aware of the way I use the
>> language to express myself and to understand the ways in which the
>> language is subverted for the purpose of false framing real issues.
>> The word "moral" is a shining example of this language destruction.
>
> LOL. Well, at least you are frank about your agenda. Redefinition of
> common words is a favorite tool of propagandists.
Yet it is not I who have redefined. Morality is "of manner and custom"
and that manner and custom is DEFINED by the vast majority. There is no
other source from which "manner and custom" can flow and there is no other
rational definition of the word "moral".
>>> All rights certainly presume a social context. "Rights" and
>>> "property" are concepts for demarcating "what is mine and what is
>>> thine" in a social context. Outside a social context such concepts
>>> would have no purpose.
>>
>> BINGO.
>
> The assumption of a social context is not equivalent to, and does not
> entail, "social" (political) decision-making. The concept of an economy
> also presumes a social context, but does not entail that economic
> decisions are made politically. You have an economy wherever you have
> two or more persons willing and able to engage in trades. But each
> person decides for himself what he will trade and with whom.
Outside a social context there is no such thing as trade; no such concept
as "ownership". The rules that define "legal ownership" are not an
individual decision and can never be an individual decision (except as
extended from right to life and introverted willingness to cease to exist
rather than forsake ones unique opinion). All such rules are "common
good" as defined by the vast majority.
--
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of society but the people themselves; and
if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson
http://GreaterVoice.org/extend
