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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Even back in the 1950s when I was in high school there was some of it; I ran into a Civic teacher who asked as a homework question whether people have to do what society tells them to. I, naively, reasoned that since we have freedom the answer was "No." The teacher asserted in class the next day that that was wrong and that "society" meant government.

I would disagree with your whole premise that a culture/society/nation doesn't have the right, in fact duty, to establish minimum standards of behavior for its members. Not only that, but a mechanism to enforce those standards. We could call it -- laws, maybe...

Just curious, but did you watch the video this thread was based on???

42 posted on 01/30/2009 11:10:46 PM PST by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: A lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on!)
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To: ForGod'sSake
Even back in the 1950s when I was in high school there was some of it; I ran into a Civic teacher who asked as a homework question whether people have to do what society tells them to. I, naively, reasoned that since we have freedom the answer was "No." The teacher asserted in class the next day that that was wrong and that "society" meant government.
I would disagree with your whole premise that a culture/society/nation doesn't have the right, in fact duty, to establish minimum standards of behavior for its members. Not only that, but a mechanism to enforce those standards. We could call it -- laws, maybe...
The objection is not to laws, but to the concept that everything which is not mandated by those laws is forbidden by them. And the import of equating "society" with government is precisely that. Why else do you think that socialists equate those two different things? They rhetorically hide behind the word "society" - or, sometimes, "the public sector" - when government is precisely what they mean.

43 posted on 01/31/2009 3:58:22 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Change is what journalism is all about. NATURALLY journalists favor "change.")
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To: ForGod'sSake
Just curious, but did you watch the video this thread was based on???
I hope you don't think I wrote reply #8 without having done so . . .

45 posted on 01/31/2009 4:28:01 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Change is what journalism is all about. NATURALLY journalists favor "change.")
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