#181
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John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: ... people doing very well economically who put their own benefit ahead of broader society. Another group are anti-gay and/or anti-choice. They're not stupid or duped -- they're just haters and immoral. God damn you are stupid. |
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#182
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Tom Kunich wrote: Here's the long and the short of it - JT, I consider you to be one of the more intelligent posters on the group. And yet you allow yourself to be led around by the nose. "Stupid is as stupid does." -- Forrest Gump |
#183
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Tom Kunich wrote: Here's the long and the short of it - JT, I consider you to be one of the more intelligent posters on the group. And yet you allow yourself to be led around by the nose. "Stupid is as stupid does." -- Forrest Gump |
#184
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#185
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#186
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John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On 24 Nov 2004 23:53:00 GMT, (TritonRider) wrote: "Should such an ignorant people (Americans) lead the world?" -- Michael Moore What is your obsession with Michael Moore? http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publis...tory_12810.php You are an ignorant stupid voter and are thus condemned in the strongest terms. |
#187
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John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On 24 Nov 2004 23:53:00 GMT, (TritonRider) wrote: "Should such an ignorant people (Americans) lead the world?" -- Michael Moore What is your obsession with Michael Moore? http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publis...tory_12810.php You are an ignorant stupid voter and are thus condemned in the strongest terms. |
#188
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Tim Mullin wrote: (TritonRider) wrote ...and that--along with the Idea of the United States--is what I love. I'm not sure what your "idea" is, but the idea of *individual liberty* is the ideal I cherish about the US. They would be happy with it if it was remade in the image they want. And that's a bad thing? *Absolutely* it can be, if it destroys the prime idea/directive: individual liberty. For example, this happened in the Weimar Republic: "We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons.... If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair.... We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come." — Joseph Goebbels I thought that's what democracy was all about. Let's not confound ourselves by mistakenly focusing on democracy -- "what it is about" is liberty. Democracy must be put into its proper place as subordinate to liberty. "Democracy" can end up simply being mob rule, or a ticket to totalitarianism, such as that expressed by Goebbels. Bush's comments about some "mandate," given the 51% of a popular vote (voting being the grossest form of sentiment expression) is ludicrous. The government's job is to protect our liberty from within and from without, no more and no less. "This, I submit, is a travesty... Because when democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself." From http://sun.yumasun.com/cgi-bin/artma...ew.cgi/2/3488: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Liberty versus Democracy Liberty and democracy not same thing BY TIBOR MACHAN Jan 11, 2003 Over the past several decades of American political life the idea of liberty has taken a back seat to that of democracy. Liberty involves human beings governing themselves, being sovereign citizens, while democracy is a method by which decisions are reached within groups. In a just society it is liberty that is primary. The entire point of law is to secure liberty for everyone, to make sure the rights of individuals to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is protected from any human agent bent on violating them. Democracy is but a byproduct of liberty. Because we are supposed to be free to govern ourselves, whenever some issue of public policy faces the citizenry, they are all entitled to take part. Democratic government rests, in a free society, on the right of every individual to take whatever actions are needed to influence public policy. Because freedom or liberty is primary, the scope of public policy and, thus, democracy in a just society is strictly limited. The reason is that free men and women may not be intruded on even if a majority of their fellows would decide to do so. If one is free, which means a self-governing person, then even the majority of one's fellows lack the authority to take over one's governance without one's consent. This is what the Declaration of Independence means when it mentions that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In a just society no one loses his or her authority for self-government without giving it up as a matter of choice. No one gets to operate on you, no matter how wise and competent, without you giving your consent, and the same is true, in a just system, about imposing duties and obligations on people. They must agree to this. If they do not, they aren't to be ordered about at all. The only apparent exception is when it comes to laws that protect everyone's rights. One may indeed be ordered not to kill, rob, rape, burglarize, assault another person, even if one fails to consent to this. It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government may only act to protect rights, to impose the laws that achieve that goal, nothing more. Again, as the Declaration of Independence notes, it is to secure our rights that governments are instituted, not for any other purpose. Of course, this idea of limited government hardly figures into considerations of public policy in the United States or elsewhere. We have never actually confined government to this clearly limited, just purpose. It has always gone beyond that, and today its scope is nearly totalitarian, the very opposite of being limited. But there is no doubt that even though liberty has been nearly forgotten as an ideal of just government in America as well as elsewhere, democracy does remain something of an operational ideal. In this way liberty has been curtailed tremendously, mainly to the minor sphere of everyone having a right to take part in public decision-making. Whereas the original idea was that we are free in all realms and democracy concerns mainly who will administer a system of laws that are required to protect our liberty, now the idea is that democracy addresses everything in our lives and the only liberty we have left is to take part in the decision-making about whatever is taken to be a so-called “public” matter. One way this is clearly evident is how many of the top universities in this country construe public administration to be a topic having to do primarily with the way democracy works. Indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, even thoug For example, the courses at America's premier public administration graduate school, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, are mainly focused on problems of democracy. At this institution nearly 40 percent of the students attending come from 75 foreign countries, many of them from those that used to be under Soviet rule, and what they focus on in nearly all their courses is democracy, not liberty. Assignments in these courses tend to raise problems about implementing democratic governance and leave the issue of how individual liberty should be secured as practically irrelevant. Or, to put it more precisely, the liberty -- or human right -- that is of interest in most of these courses is the liberty to take part in democratic decision-making. (“Human rights” has come to refer in most of these course and their texts mainly to the right to vote and to take part in the political process!) Yes, of course, voting is a bit of genuine liberty that many of the people of the world have never enjoyed, so for them it is a significant matter, to be sure. But it is clearly not the liberty that the Declaration of Independence mentions when it affirms that all of us are equal in having unalienable rights to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration speaks of a very wide scope of individual liberty, while the premier public administration school of America teaches, at least by implication, that the only liberty of any importance is the liberty to take part in public policy determination. This, I submit, is a travesty. Once democracy is treated as the premier public value, with individual liberty cast to the side except as far as taking part in democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in principle or practice. Nearly anything can become a public policy issue, so long as some measure of democracy is involved in reaching decisions about it. And that turns out to be a serious threat to democracy itself. Because when democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself. The law could permit the democratically reached destruction of democracy itself! That is just what happened in the Weimar Republic, where a democratic election put Hitler in power and destroyed democracy. If you ever wonder why it is that public forums, including the Sunday TV magazine programs, the op-ed pages of newspapers, the feature articles of magazines do not discuss human liberty but fret mostly about democracy, this is the reason: The major educational institutions tend not to care about liberty and have substituted a very limited version of it, namely democracy as the primary concern. Once that is accomplished, individual liberty becomes defenseless. Indeed, democracy is just as capable of being totalitarian as is a dictatorship, only with democracy it seems less clearly unjust, given that this little bit of liberty is still intact, namely to take part in the vote. -- Tibor Machan is a professor of business ethics and Western Civilization at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and co-author of "A Primer on Business Ethics." He advises Freedom Communications, parent company of this newspaper. E-mail him at ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This and other amusing articles are collected into the following text: _Neither Left Nor Right_ Tibor R. Machan Hoover Institution Press Publication (C) 2004 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...l/-/0817939822 |
#189
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Tim Mullin wrote: (TritonRider) wrote ...and that--along with the Idea of the United States--is what I love. I'm not sure what your "idea" is, but the idea of *individual liberty* is the ideal I cherish about the US. They would be happy with it if it was remade in the image they want. And that's a bad thing? *Absolutely* it can be, if it destroys the prime idea/directive: individual liberty. For example, this happened in the Weimar Republic: "We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons.... If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair.... We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come." — Joseph Goebbels I thought that's what democracy was all about. Let's not confound ourselves by mistakenly focusing on democracy -- "what it is about" is liberty. Democracy must be put into its proper place as subordinate to liberty. "Democracy" can end up simply being mob rule, or a ticket to totalitarianism, such as that expressed by Goebbels. Bush's comments about some "mandate," given the 51% of a popular vote (voting being the grossest form of sentiment expression) is ludicrous. The government's job is to protect our liberty from within and from without, no more and no less. "This, I submit, is a travesty... Because when democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself." From http://sun.yumasun.com/cgi-bin/artma...ew.cgi/2/3488: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Liberty versus Democracy Liberty and democracy not same thing BY TIBOR MACHAN Jan 11, 2003 Over the past several decades of American political life the idea of liberty has taken a back seat to that of democracy. Liberty involves human beings governing themselves, being sovereign citizens, while democracy is a method by which decisions are reached within groups. In a just society it is liberty that is primary. The entire point of law is to secure liberty for everyone, to make sure the rights of individuals to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is protected from any human agent bent on violating them. Democracy is but a byproduct of liberty. Because we are supposed to be free to govern ourselves, whenever some issue of public policy faces the citizenry, they are all entitled to take part. Democratic government rests, in a free society, on the right of every individual to take whatever actions are needed to influence public policy. Because freedom or liberty is primary, the scope of public policy and, thus, democracy in a just society is strictly limited. The reason is that free men and women may not be intruded on even if a majority of their fellows would decide to do so. If one is free, which means a self-governing person, then even the majority of one's fellows lack the authority to take over one's governance without one's consent. This is what the Declaration of Independence means when it mentions that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In a just society no one loses his or her authority for self-government without giving it up as a matter of choice. No one gets to operate on you, no matter how wise and competent, without you giving your consent, and the same is true, in a just system, about imposing duties and obligations on people. They must agree to this. If they do not, they aren't to be ordered about at all. The only apparent exception is when it comes to laws that protect everyone's rights. One may indeed be ordered not to kill, rob, rape, burglarize, assault another person, even if one fails to consent to this. It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government may only act to protect rights, to impose the laws that achieve that goal, nothing more. Again, as the Declaration of Independence notes, it is to secure our rights that governments are instituted, not for any other purpose. Of course, this idea of limited government hardly figures into considerations of public policy in the United States or elsewhere. We have never actually confined government to this clearly limited, just purpose. It has always gone beyond that, and today its scope is nearly totalitarian, the very opposite of being limited. But there is no doubt that even though liberty has been nearly forgotten as an ideal of just government in America as well as elsewhere, democracy does remain something of an operational ideal. In this way liberty has been curtailed tremendously, mainly to the minor sphere of everyone having a right to take part in public decision-making. Whereas the original idea was that we are free in all realms and democracy concerns mainly who will administer a system of laws that are required to protect our liberty, now the idea is that democracy addresses everything in our lives and the only liberty we have left is to take part in the decision-making about whatever is taken to be a so-called “public” matter. One way this is clearly evident is how many of the top universities in this country construe public administration to be a topic having to do primarily with the way democracy works. Indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, even thoug For example, the courses at America's premier public administration graduate school, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, are mainly focused on problems of democracy. At this institution nearly 40 percent of the students attending come from 75 foreign countries, many of them from those that used to be under Soviet rule, and what they focus on in nearly all their courses is democracy, not liberty. Assignments in these courses tend to raise problems about implementing democratic governance and leave the issue of how individual liberty should be secured as practically irrelevant. Or, to put it more precisely, the liberty -- or human right -- that is of interest in most of these courses is the liberty to take part in democratic decision-making. (“Human rights” has come to refer in most of these course and their texts mainly to the right to vote and to take part in the political process!) Yes, of course, voting is a bit of genuine liberty that many of the people of the world have never enjoyed, so for them it is a significant matter, to be sure. But it is clearly not the liberty that the Declaration of Independence mentions when it affirms that all of us are equal in having unalienable rights to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration speaks of a very wide scope of individual liberty, while the premier public administration school of America teaches, at least by implication, that the only liberty of any importance is the liberty to take part in public policy determination. This, I submit, is a travesty. Once democracy is treated as the premier public value, with individual liberty cast to the side except as far as taking part in democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in principle or practice. Nearly anything can become a public policy issue, so long as some measure of democracy is involved in reaching decisions about it. And that turns out to be a serious threat to democracy itself. Because when democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself. The law could permit the democratically reached destruction of democracy itself! That is just what happened in the Weimar Republic, where a democratic election put Hitler in power and destroyed democracy. If you ever wonder why it is that public forums, including the Sunday TV magazine programs, the op-ed pages of newspapers, the feature articles of magazines do not discuss human liberty but fret mostly about democracy, this is the reason: The major educational institutions tend not to care about liberty and have substituted a very limited version of it, namely democracy as the primary concern. Once that is accomplished, individual liberty becomes defenseless. Indeed, democracy is just as capable of being totalitarian as is a dictatorship, only with democracy it seems less clearly unjust, given that this little bit of liberty is still intact, namely to take part in the vote. -- Tibor Machan is a professor of business ethics and Western Civilization at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and co-author of "A Primer on Business Ethics." He advises Freedom Communications, parent company of this newspaper. E-mail him at ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This and other amusing articles are collected into the following text: _Neither Left Nor Right_ Tibor R. Machan Hoover Institution Press Publication (C) 2004 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...l/-/0817939822 |
#190
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"B. Lafferty" wrote: "Tim Mullin" wrote in message k.net... (TritonRider) wrote in : I don't know if you're assertation that Michael Moore and the left hate America is born of arrogence, ignorence, or maybe both. Dissent, and even hatered are necessary parts of the democratic process. Could it be that Michael Moore is doing what he's doing because he loves his country and is deeply concerned about what is happening in it?? It could be. That fact alone does not diminish his errors. |
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