Here's another straw man for you to take on!
Posted on 08/21/2007 11:41:49 AM PDT by DesScorp
I just recently caught up with the exchange on conservatism and the culture wars between Brink Lindsey and Ramesh Ponnuru, in which Lindsey exhorts conservatives to give up any further efforts in the culture war, which he deems finished. And I also heard some of a Cato Institute talk that featured Lindsey and David Brooks, who agrees with Lindsey on this point. I agree with Peter Wood who commented on PBC that if the culture war is over, efforts to reform the university are pointless, and we obviously don't think such efforts are pointless or we wouldn't be here at PBC. Neither would the Manhattan Institute have initiated its Minding the Campus feature. Neither would Regnery be issuing its politically incorrect guides to various subjects. And so forth.
I also think that Lindsey's view of modern life as the “exuberantly pluralistic pursuit of personal fulfillment through an ever-expanding division of labor” is utterly soulless.
Also, Lindsey made some remarks in his part of the exchange, that the Right should be embarrassed about previous racism, sexism, and prudery. I don't have the exchange in front of me now, but I think that's close to what he said. In the National Review I read as a teenager, edited by William Buckley, I don't recall any of that. I recall its being sound, elegant, rational, cultured, with high intellectual standards. Lindsey should be prevailed upon to give specific examples of what he means by the sins of the Right in these areas.
(Excerpt) Read more at phibetacons.nationalreview.com ...
Truer words were never spoken... well neither were these but ...
Crack is absolutely the worst drug today I agree with you 100% on that point. If you ban the drug you can not track the users. I would rather know who they are and what they are doing. Give the user a license and enforce that.
Well, Jefferson was certainly not an orthodox Christian. That said, he probably spent more time with Christian scripture than most Christians do, given the “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” that he wrote. He said (paraphrasing) that the Christian code of morals was the most sublime “ever offered to man.” (Makes me ask who offered it in Jefferson’s mind if he was a Deist who believed in an impersonal God? And why did he rely on divine providence in the Declaration if he was a deist and God is impersonal?). Another founder that they say was a deist is Washington, but he was a regular church goer.
“Let’s take the extreme example. Child pornography...”
Child pornography should be illegal for the same reason that child sex is.... the same reason that we don’t let insane people stand trial.....
The individual, in those cases lacks the requisite mental capacity to form consent. They aren’t able to comprehend the possible consequences of thier actions. Therefore somebody has to act to protect thier interests.
With mentaly sane adults, this no longer holds true. They (in theory) have the capacity to understand the consequences of thier actions and therefore get to be responsible for them. They are therefore allowed to engage in a whole host of behaviors that individuals who lack that capacity can’t..... those behaviors should include most things that are regarded as vice (sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, pornaography, etc) as long as such actions don’t directly abridge the freedoms of others.
#####You’re sure hung up on homosexuality. Why is that?#####
LOL! You’ve taken Cultural Marxism 101 and passed with flying colors. You join up with homosexuals and launch a culture war against Judeo-Christian values, and when people fight back you accuse them of being obsessed with homosexuality.
In case you didn’t notice, the article which triggered this thread dealt with “conservatives” such as David Brooks and Jonah Goldberg who are recommending that we throw in the towel and embrace the homosexual agenda.
Your whole post was very well said. But this point says it in a nut shell.
Greg,
I’m not sure why you think this Gramsci fellow is the prophet of libertarianism...but I can assure you that the only ones who think so besides you are probably him and a few of his groupies.
Frankly, I’ve never heard of him before....and I expect the same holds true for the vast majority of self-described libertarians.
Furthermore, who do you think is telling you NOT to fight the culture war? It’s not me. I’ve done a share of fighting in that war myself. It may not have been on the exact same fronts that you have (although I suspect we share a fair number of cultural values in common) but I have.
The only thing that libertarians are doing is trying to set the Rules of Engagement... FOR BOTH SIDES. Neither side gets to use the big stick of the Law (i.e. brute force)... because as soon as you do that EVERYBODY (including you, whether you realize it or not) LOSES.
What happens when my “oughts” are different from your “oughts” are different from Jane’s “oughts”.
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We vote. That’s our system of government.
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Our system of government is based upon the minimum neccesary regulations to insure that an individual is able to make thier own decisions and act on thier own accord.
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It is not. You wish it were, but that is not historically the case, currently the case, and not even philosophically the case. The Constitution was adopted because the Articles of Confederation made the governement too weak not because they made the government too strong. Understand that we are in agreement that government should be limited, small compared to the government today, as non-intrusive as possible (here we will probably disagree about the particulars of what is possible, but that is what voting is for).
Regarding the Taliban and Stalin nonsense, I assure you that basing laws on morality is not totalitarian . . . it is inevitable. Your preference for freedom is a moral viewpoint.
We don’t believe in COLLECTIVE GUILT and COLLECTIVE punishment. You don’t punish Johnny for something Jimmy did.... even if Johnny and Jimmy read the same books, watch the same movies, belong to the same political party and hang out with the same friends.
Ah yes, the old "you're a collectivist" argument that libertarians trot out when they get backed into a corner.
Sorry old man, but there's nothing "collective" about holding a person accountable for engaging in an individual activity which is well-known to contribute harm to others. Your example is simply non-sequitur to the discussion.
Strictly from a libertarian perspective, it’s debatable whether drunk driving (as opposed to vehicular homicide) should be against the law.
And that's an example of the reason why I consider libertarians to be, generally speaking, irresponsible children.
1) Driving has ALWAYS been considered a PRIVILAGE not a RIGHT (Unlike reading or viewing material...which is generaly considered a 1st Ammendment Right)
You've not heard of unenumerated rights, via the 9th amendment?
2) Regulation of Driving applies to use of PUBLIC Property ( as opposed to what happens in the privacy of your own home)
True enough, but non-sequitur to this discussion, since driving on your own property doesn't have the potential to harm somebody who is somewhere other than on your property. Drug users who takes hits at home, however, have a much higher likelihood of going off their own property to harm somebody somewhere else - i.e. their behaviour at home still presents a likelihood that they will adversely affect other people elsewhere. Hence, you argument fails.
3) The correlation between driving under the influence and grave harm to others is OVERWHELMING. There is virtualy NO SAFE way to operate a motor vehicle while drunk if other individuals may be present. {I’d challenge you to make that case for some of the activities you want to regulate)
It is untrue that there is an overwhelming instance of drunk driving ending up in grave harm to others. In many cases, people drive drunk and do not cause harm to others. We only hear about the cases where they DO cause harm, but rarely if ever the cases where they DON'T. It is true, however, that the practice has the POTENTIAL to do so, each and every time it is done. Which is my whole argument.
Likewise, we know that certain types of narcotics are closely linked with the commission of violent crimes, and that this is so because the addicts commit the crimes in an effort to obtain the drugs to satisfy their adiction. To deny this link is to simply ignore the mountains of evidence which have been gathered and seen for decades. Hence, many drugs, at least, present a very real, though often potential, danger to other memebrs of society when they are used.
This is the same reason we outlaw [RELIGION]. It has already killed thousands - i.e. presented ACTUAL HARM. We regulate it despite the fact that not everybody who [PRACTICES RELIGION] is necessarily always going to harm someone by doing so - i.e. there is only the POTENTIAL for them to harm someone. There’s no logical difference”
If every time a person practiced their religion, they actually presented a potential threat of harm to others, I would agree with you. However, there is no basis for making an argument that the practice of "religion", per se, even carries with it this potential, whereas with drugs, a person is ALWAYS opening his or herself to addiction that can potentially lead to the commission of violent crimes, and with pornography, a person is ALWAYS leaving his or herself open to a addiction which can spin out of control and result in violent sex crimes. There is nothing in "religion" itself which presents this same sort of likelihood, so actualy, there IS a logical difference.
Um, I’m seeing numerous intermediary steps here
1) Drug user takes drugs | Person eats red meat
2) Drug user gets addicted | Person develops heart disease
3) Drug user needs money for fix | Person needs to drive to supermarket to buy more red meat.
4) Drug user shoots some-one for money | Person crashes car into school bus during heart attack.
Where’s that logical difference again?
Well, one obvious logical difference would be that with a drug user who is addicted and needs a fix, there is a direct likelihood that said user will seek to obtain the money to buy the drugs, regardless of how said money is obtained. It's a direct example of causation. We KNOW this to be the case, as decades of crime statistics demonstrate.
Concerning red meat consumption and heart disease, there are numerous factors which contribute to heart disease, and red meat consumption is actually questionable as to whether it is one of these factors, or to how much it actually does play a contributing role. Further, eating red meat doesn't then require a person to even operate a motor vehicle, nor does it guarantee the subsequent and exceedingly unlikely and unfortuitous timing which your example uses. Nothing about eating read meat even presents the potential for a person to operate a motor vehicle, and in fact, doesn't even present a solid potentiality for a person to even HAVE a heart attack. The same is manifestly not true about the abuse of many addictive narcotics. That's the logical difference.
I’m not sure why you think this Gramsci fellow is the prophet of libertarianism...but I can assure you that the only ones who think so besides you are probably him and a few of his groupies.
Frankly, I’ve never heard of him before....and I expect the same holds true for the vast majority of self-described libertarians.
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Sigh.
Didn’t the Founding Fathers intend for states, localities, and voters to decide matters such as abortion, sodomy, marriage law, pornography, etc.?
Weren’t those the rules of engagement they gave us on those issues?
Those rules of engagement have been breached by activist left-wing judges. The only reason any of those things are ever discussed at the federal level, or in presidential campaigns, is because liberal judges overthrew the rules of engagement our Founders gave us and federalized many of those issues, with libertarian support.
While I disagree with your opinion, it is immaterial to the discussion.
It is my assertion that the default American ethical standard is, and has always been the Judeo-Christian ethic. Our laws were built upon it, our sense of right and wrong is based upon it, Our sense of work and industry, fair play, charity, justice, mercy (even in battle), chastity, honor... All these come from the God of our fathers. Our social structures cannot survive without it.
It is so uniquely and pervasively American, that even if you were raised to worship otherwise, if you were raised in this country it is imbued in you. It is impossible to avoid.
To attempt to replace that ethic with something else, or to dissect it in order to remove the parts that are unpopular in the pop culture is to perilously and purposefully attack the root and foundation of our very being. It cannot be done.
America without God is not America at all, as our near history and present day attest.
Mel,
Here you go:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/cultural_marxism.html
It will help you understand the left’s tactics and objectives in the culture war. Gramsci was definitely not a libertarian!
Greg,
We are a Constitutional Republic rather then a direct Democracy PRECISELY because the Founders understood that trading one Tyrant for a Thousand was no bargain. They understood well that a majority could be as much a tryanny as a monarch. That’s why we have a Bill of Rights. It’s why the Ammendment process works the way it does. It’s a big part of why our Constitution and our system of government is formulated the way it is. Your trying to pretend it otherwise does not make it so.
America was very much founded on the ideal, that individuals should largely be free to act on thier own accord....as long as those actions did not transgress against anothers rights.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I’m sorry I missed the part of that statement that said “Make sure people obey the will of God”.... could you please point it out to me? I do seem to see a little something in there about LIBERTY however.
Webster (Mod for html)
secular
Main Entry: 1sec·u·lar Pronunciation: 'se-ky&-l&r Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French seculer, from Late Latin saecularis, from saeculum the present world, from Latin, generation, age, century, world; akin to Welsh hoedl lifetime
1.
a : of or relating to the worldly or temporal (secular concerns)
b : not overtly or specifically religious (secular music)
c : not ecclesiastical or clerical (secular courts) (secular landowners)
2 : not bound by monastic vows or rules; specifically : of, relating to, or forming clergy not belonging to a religious order or congregation (a secular priest)
3
a : occurring once in an age or a century
b : existing or continuing through ages or centuries
c : of or relating to a long term of indefinite duration (secular inflation)
- sec·u·lar·i·ty /"se-ky&-'la-r&-tE/ noun
- sec·u·lar·ly /'se-ky&-l&r-lE/ adverb
I may be a newbie to FreeRepublic . . But I’m not a newbie poster. I cut my teeth, so to speak, at Delphi, AKA Helphi Forums. I’m been posting for maybe 8 years.
But thanks for the warning.
I want what’s best for America . . not to be mistaken with what’s politically correct best.
Sage words of wisdom for those who wish to rationalize.
But reality has a way of not caring what our conception of it is. It operates on us the way it wants without regard to such rationalizations. Thus it is necessarily revealed or it is not reality.
Here's another straw man for you to take on!
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