Posted on 03/22/2007 11:28:22 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
...We constantly present the false impression that government can solve problems that government in America was designed not to solve. Families are significantly less important in the development of children today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Religion has less influence than it did 30 or 40 years ago. Communities don't mean what they meant 30 or 40 years ago.
As Americans, we're not sure we share values. We're sometimes even afraid to use the word values. We talk about teaching ethics in schools -- people say, "What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't." And they confuse that with teaching of religion. And we are afraid to reaffirm the basics upon which a lawful and a decent society are based. We're almost embarrassed by it.
.... What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
... The fact is that we're fooling people if we suggest to them the solutions to these very, very deep-seated problems are going to be found in government.
... They are going to have to be just as solid and just as strong in teaching every single youngster their responsibility for citizenship. We're going to find the answer when schools once again train citizens. Schools exist in America and have always existed to train responsible citizens of the United States of America.
If they don't do that, it's very hard to hold us together as a country, because it's shared values that hold us together.
(Excerpt) Read more at query.nytimes.com ...
Freedom without authority is anarchy, and anarchy destroys freedom.
Buhockers I'm completely wrong...this "system" is not limited to the Federal Constitutin, the system is made up of Federal laws and statutes, the individual State Constitutions, State laws and statutes, County and municipal laws, etc.
Freedom without authority is anarchy, and anarchy destroys freedom.
WRONG! You've it seems you've been broken and now the state owns you completely. I'm sorry for you, if this is true it's a sad, unnatural state of mind you're in.
The State doesn't "own" me, but we, the creators of "the State", have agreed on limitations to our actions from the onset of the creation of this country.
As a matter of fact, mankind has had limitations imposed on it by authority figures since Creation:
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it."
The very essence of our society is based on our mutual agreement to obey laws established by those who we ourselves elevated to positions of power via the orderly system we ourselves set in place, and enacted in agreement with the powers granted to them via the various Constitutions in existence, from the individual State Constitutions to the Constitution of the United States, and accept the enforcement of those laws by the institutions we've created to enforce them.
Lots of people disagree with that, but they're mostly in jail.
You live under every single law that I live under, and you're subject to enforcement by the exact same authority that I am.
Freedom without the presence of authority is anarchy, and anarchy destroys freedom.
I noticed that while you made yourself busy arguing with things that I DIDN'T say, you ignored the thing I did say.
Yes.
The French concept, however does think that freedom is about authority, specifically that freedom flows from government.
The American concept: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."
Pardon me, but isn't Saddam dead? I doubt he can be hanging and moving us backward.
Without the authority granted by us to the government, and the government's ability to exercise said authority, there could be no freedom. The authority granted to the government by the people secures our rights, and in effect our freedoms.
What is freedom without the presence of authority?
Somalia.
The Founder's own words prove the fact that freedom is not secure without the presence of authority..."to secure these rights..." If there were no "authorities", the strong could kill the weak to steal their possessions, the many could subjugate the few, the young abuse the old, and the mature the immature.
In the Founder's own words...governments are instituted among men to secure rights; we agree as a society to grant the power to an authoritative presence to do whatever we deem necessary to protect our rights, and to punish those who violate them.
There's nothing dark or scary about Rudy's words.
Luis, certainly there needs to be authority to protect our individual freedoms from the threats of others in or out of our society. Including especially from those who wield authority. IMO the preservation of liberty is nearly the sole justification for government.
Let's hope that's what Rudy meant. I'll take your word for it that he did. I like the guy.
Because freedom isn't really about authority. Freedom is freedom *from* authority.
...as long as you're living within the parameters set by society.
For example...let's say that I consider that freedom "from" authority to mean that I am allowed to walk naked through the mall, and to fornicate on the salad line at Sweet Tomatoes. Well, obviously, as a society we have agreed that those actions constitute WAY too much freedom, and we will immediately call in the authorities to enforce the part of our common, agreed upon restrictions on our actions that disallows me from exercising my freedom to walk naked and fornicate on the cucumber salad.
If we truly defined freedom and being freedom "from" authorities, no one would have the right to stop me from doing exactly as I pleased; the owner of the establishment would certainly lack the ability to stop me as I would stand on my freedom to conduct myself as I pleased without deference to his authority as a business owner, or from the patrons at large, since my rights to do as I pleased provided me with the freedom to ignore the authority they may feel they had by their sheer numbers.
Regarding the business owner, you really don't have freedom if you can't enforce your own standards on your own property. Those who wish to fornicate, as you put it, should be free to do that on their own property. Not yours.
Your freedom to throw a fist stops before it touches my nose, as they say. You should have freedom to do as you please until it impacts my freedom.
I recognize that that allows a lot of latitude for definition. I also recognize that society has certain traditions that it enforces by law, such as no screwing in public, and I have no problem with that kind enforcement most of the time.
Anyhow, as long as everyone is equal before the law, then we can avoid the arbitrary use of power that defines totalitarianism. I trust that Rudy was alluding to that idea.
My freedom to throw a punch may stop at the edge of your nose, but if you lack the physical ability to stop me from doing so, and there is no accepted authority available to you to punish me after I punched you, or from stopping me from doing it again, then we have absolute freedom without authority...AKA, anarchy.
I understand the concept of authority safeguarding freedom.
Going to bed...good night.
See you tomorrow.
I'm pretty sure that we are on the same page. I hope that Rudy Giuliani is also.
"Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."
Because while it is perfectly obvious that, humanity being what it is, there must be some authority over conduct and ethics to maintain individual freedom, freedom is still not "about" authority, it is about liberty. It is about limiting authority. Freedom tolerates *limited* authority only. And in a free country you "cede discretion about what you do" only in those matters in which your conduct would impact the freedom of others. You just don't go around talking happily about how much control you give the state over your choices of actions.
Our founding fathers noted that the system they devised would work only for a "virtous" people. I take that to mean that they recognized perfectly well that if enough members of a society abuse their freedoms by allowing them to impact the freedoms of others, then that society will move to limit freedom. End of experiment in freedom.
In any case, since the kind of authority that is associated with freedom is necessarily limited, I would have appreciated a modifier or two in Rudy's speech. I'm not sure what he was getting at, but as a lover of freedom, I'm automatically distrustful of those who sing the praises of authority.
BTW, aren't you something of a libertarian?
Luis has this whole "neo-libertarianism" schtick he's been pushing. Every libertarian I'm aware of on FR thinks that it's a gross twisting of the term "libertarian". Libertarians don't support gun-grabbing. Period.
They are not lovers of authority either.
Are you suggesting that I support gun grabbing?
Please support your accusation with links to my posts supporting such a thing.
If you have to lie and misrepresent my position in order to bolster your argument, that's a sure sign of a pretty weak argument in your part.
P.S. What an incredible example of runaway collectivism you display when gauge my own individual political ideology by
holding it up to the ideas of others.
I'm not interested in what others think of my politics, or what what name I use to label them, and I certainly don't require validation from you or anyone else to "feel" more accepted.
Do you?
"They" are not lovers of overt authority, but they do love authority insofar as they are by no means anarchists.
Or are you suggesting that libertarians are anarchists?
Educate yourself...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolibertarianism
I don't wish to re-hash some of the gun control debates we've had in the past, but you do not support a literal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and support the rights of states to grab guns at will. Nothing personal, but if I ping every libertarian freeper I know of and ask their opinion, I can assure you that they'll all agree that it is not libertarian in any sense of the word.
I suspect the reasons we libertarians may be so sensitive about perverting the term is that people such as Bill Mahar have tried to play themselves off as libertarians. Also the Libertarian Party itself has completely misrepresented libertarianism. If you're going to use the term, expect healthy skepticism.
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