Trickle Down?Follow

Oh well, good.

I can stand disagreements, but willful ignorance kills me.

The courts work with a 250 year old document and try to interpret a scant and terribly short directive on the procedures of the country. It's great to hearken back to how the country was founded, but honestly, we should be using our brains instead of precedent and the existential status of what it means to be a human in order to determine our ethical systems, which should be influenced, and not dictated by, an antiquated document using an antiquated conception of human rights.

The courts also have a vested interest (as do all government organizations) in maintaining order and law. You can't do that with radical thought or active ethical judgment. It has nothing to do with "rights"



Hate to interject some logic into this discussion, but accept this premise and your ENTIRE LIBERTARIAN tradition dies. You need will, specifically inherent, innate, free, will to act as the basis of the very concepts of rights.

Reductio ad absurdum. You're done. Like I said before. You want liberty? You have better be agreeing with me.



Wrong

The concepts of liberties and rights and how they should apply within a society haven't changed. The logical arguments involving such things haven't changed. It's not enough to say that the Constitution is a 250 year old document and therefore shouldn't apply. You need to show how the related arguments fail. You haven't done that.




First off. I'm not a Libertarian. Not in the strictest sense (ie: agree with every single tenant of the position).

You're also changing the conditions of the debate to suit your argument. And in a pretty irrational fashion as well I might add. I'm not going to get drawn into a philosophical debate about the existence of free will, and it's not really necessary for this issue anyway. The argument can be debated purely on the terms being used, so let's not drag additional stuff in that only serves to muddy the waters, ok?

Your argument hinged on the idea that a parent, given the right to raise his child as he wished, would be able to turn that child into a submissive clone. You further assert that this is "bad".

My counter is that, if this is true, then it is true regardless of who is raising the child. It's not limited to parents. Ergo, your argument only supports the idea that parents should not have more rights to raise their children than anyone else (let's just say "society" or "the state" here) if you can show that the "bad" thing you mention is avoided in those situations.

You haven't done that. In fact, I'm quite sure that you *cant* legitimately support that argument. Therefore, your argument really rests on the assumption that society or the state will turn children into submissive clones that will follow rules and ideas that you think are good, while the ones they'd follow if they were left to their parents care would be "bad". It's not the fact that they'd be "programmed" in some way, but the specifics of what the programming would be that you don't like.

Am I right in that assumption?


And don't get me wrong. This is a valid direction to go with this. But it does open up questions and fears of an authoritarian state, doesn't it? Surely, we could ensure that the children are all raised to believe the same things, and follow the same rules, and overall conform to our vision of society better if we give the power to raise children to the state. But is that actually better? I'll repeat what I asked earlier in the thread: What happens to the ideas of diversity? What happens to individuality? If children are clones of their parents and their parents are all "different", then those differences will be passed to their children. If they are all clones of the state, then that isn't the case anymore, is it? We'll have "one society", but can we be sure that's going to actually be "better"?


Note. I've simply accepted your assumption here. I happen to believe there is great value in freedom and individuality. And yeah. I happen to believe that people do have "free will" (although that's a whole topic of discussion by itself). I just wanted to explore your argument alone and see where it takes us. And quite honestly, where it takes us is pretty horrible. The word "Dystopia" comes to mind...

Only if my argument only works in one case. I'm saying that regardless of whether a child has free will or not, it's better to protect the rights of parents to raise their children than the state (or "anyone else").

I don't "believe in both". I'm saying that the point is irrelevant to the discussion. Let me walk you through the logic:

Condition1. There is free will.

Effect: Children will make their own decisions regardless of who raises them. Thus, there's no fear that parents will turn their children into "mindless clones" of themselves, and therefore no reason to abridge the rights of parents to do the raising of their children.

Condition2. There is no free will.

Effect. Children will become clones of whomever raises them. They will adopt the ideas and opinions imposed on them by their parents. But this is true regardless of whether the parents raise them, or someone else. Ergo, the very fact of this situation is *not* sufficient argument to remove parental rights in this case. You need to make a stronger argument than just "Parents will be able to make their children into mindless clones of themselves".


Do you see how your argument fails in either case. I don't have to prove which condition is true, only that you're wrong either way.



Sure. We have free will. You lose.

I'll do it again. We don't have free will. You still lose. Muahahaha!!!




The subject of the existence and effect of free will is vastly larger than the scope of this discussion. Do you remember when I said you were avoiding the issue by brining in extraneous arguments? This would be an example. We don't need to discuss the existence of free will to conclude that liberty is best protected by allowing parents the most rights with regard to the raising of their children. Your line of reasoning serves no purpose other than distraction...


And for the record, I don't think that your use of free-will in this context is necessary for liberty to exist. But that's a completely different topic.

You hate it when someone doesn't worship your all-knowing supremacy :-)


Not at all. I hate people who are such insecure cowards that they don't have the ability to admit making a mistake. In point of fact, it's largely the dividing line I draw between people whose opinions I might be interested in and worthless pieces of shit I'd laugh about being raped to death by elephants.


You know, it's actually really funny. I'm keeping my own ding record of how many times I can get you to respond to one of my posts. Ding 3!


An infinite amount of times, sucker. Mystery solved. Believe it or not, the premise that you're cunning manipulating me into responding just doesn't drive me into a tizzy. If I decide you're a waste of time, I'll let you know and never bother with you again. Being a bit of a ******, though, it's far more likely that you'll tire of having the **** kicked out of you repeatedly before I tire of spending thirty seconds doing it.


When I started lurking here, I read your posts and thought, what an *** hole.

Then I lurked more and began to see, wow, he's extremely entertaining.

Lately I've read some specific posts and thought, what's wrong with me, Smash is making sense!

The most interesting thing of all is how often you sound exactly like Justice Scalia ... except for that whole socialist thing. Scalia also doesn't credit anything he can't read in plain black and white.


Anything? No? LAW??? Yes. That's the entire point of codifying things as laws.

Didn't you respond to that post already? Dude I'm gonna go play eternal sonata. I want to see Frederick Chopin being badass

Hi.

And who's getting stuck on semantics?

For the record though, technically the first was a logic flaw (counter argument was irrelevant to the argument it attempted to counter). The second was a straight unsound assumption. I'll give you half points though... :)

Ok, your arguement that what Gbaji is saying is incorrect because it assumes both free will and not free will is not correct. (Honestly though, there so many much better ways you could fight against his points without resorting to such a weak attack that leaves you high and dry.)



Free will vs. otherwise isn't as black and white as you believe. A parent raising a child in a certain way does not make them clones of that parent. Sure, they pick up stuff from both them and their society, and are molded by them to a certain extent in combination with other factors, including their personality and random chance.

You also can't possibly believe that the parents are eradicating their free will, can you? Unless you think they are exceedingly weak creatures, that is.

I assure you, I do not misunderstand.
(Also, logic is not debate.)

And you've negated your arguement.

A weak attack can be created from a (relatively) strong form.

When that occurs, it just looks painfully bad.

Indubitably.

But then again this iswas a thread about supply side economics.