Re: Commentary: The Debate About Origins


eyelessgame wrote:
Will in New Haven wrote:
SRNissen wrote:
Will in New Haven wrote:
Jeffrey Turner wrote:
Will in New Haven wrote:
As a libertarian whose view of evolution is that evolution is what
happened, we don't have all the details, I resent being lumped with
"the liberals" every time I get in a discussion with a creationist. Not
that liberal is a bad word. In it's non-political meaning, it involves
looseness and an openness to change that I would hope could be applied
to me. However, too often it is applied to collectivists these days and
that has pretty much become the definition.
Which sort of libertarian are you?

--Jeff

Not an easy question. I guess I am a moderate libertarian. When given
the choice between loosening and tightening the strictures on personal
freedom, we should choose to loosen them. I don't believe in bypassing
democracy or, in the case of the U.S., the Constitution. I don't
believe in casually violating the law simply because I disagree with it
but I will disobey the law on principal. I don't believe that we are
terribly over-taxed or that the welfare system is a major threat to
society. I think marriage is a private arrangement and that the
religious authorities should govern what is called marriage under their
purview and leave the civil definition of marriage alone. I have been,
am and will be armed. I don't believe that individual liberty can
prosper under a collectivist system. I think that prosperity is
probably more likely in a market system but that isn't a major issue
for me. Maximizing liberty is. Susan Sarandan could not talk me out of
all this. She could not even, um, cajole me out of this. But I would
like her to try.

Will in New Haven

If by "collectivist" you mean socialist, as in "Social Demokrat" in the
European sense, I believe it is absolutely critical for freedom - While
it removes your freedom to die with more money than God, it grants you
the freedom to become a doctor even if you're born to poor parents, or
earn enough money in a blue-collar job to travel the world.

They're different kinds of freedom, but I feel the latter is better.

- SRNissen
FABRICATE DIEM, PVNC

I know three physicians and a medical student right now who were born
to poor parents. That freedom was not denied them. Perhaps they weren't
granted the means but they had the freedom. They got the means.

I tend to trust statistics more than anecdotes. European nations --
particularly the Scandinavian ones -- have a lot more generational
social mobility than the US does. In the US, with few exceptions, the
children of the poor remain poor. (The children of the wealthy have the
freedom to be idle aristocrats, and many choose to be.)

Where are these "poor" people coming from, the ones that gain in their
generational social mobility. It would seem that there would be no poor
to be mobile. Social mobility is fairly common in the U.S.

Permit me to rearrange what you said -- I think you said it fairly, and
I respect (but differ with) your position.

There are all kinds of possible societies and I can't say
that the Social Democrats haven't created some failry tolerable ones

Generous and fair. I respect that.

I have
blue-collar friends who take vacations all over the place. What they
lack, which the Europeans have, is the time to do as much of it as they
might like...

[rearranged]

but that isn't my idea of freedom.

Funny, because that *is* my idea of freedom -- freedom is being able to
do what you want, instead of what you have to.

No one can do what they want instead of what they have to. Everyone
dies and no one wants to. Everyone, except those who are really
unllucky, grows old and no one, except when the other choice is
mentioned, wants to. The state cannot guarantee against necessity.


If I have to work or starve, I am bargaining for my life with my
employer -- and if I have to bargain for my life, I'm a slave.

If there is only one possible employer, every employee is a slave. If
that employer is the state, and I don't know who else it could be,
everyone is a slave of the state. Bargaining implies something other
than slavery.

It
doesn't really matter whether the gun pointed at me is a totalitarian
government or the monetary force inherent in laissez-faire capitalism.

Yes, it does. There will be more options under a market system. Finding
a niche to ones liking may be easy, hard or impossible but it is more
likely with a variety of different employers.


A society where others hold the power of life and health over me --
because I will sicken and starve if not employed -- isn't a free
society.

An employer is easier to find when there are many employers.

A society where virtually all the children of the poor are
poor isn't a free society.

That is utter nonsense. Scarcity could explain that no matter what
social arrangements are made. Although that is not the case here.

For that to be true about the U.S. you would have to redefine the poor
every generation, by the way.

A society with hereditary aristocracy isn't
a free society.

We don't have a hereditary aristocracy. We do have some people who have
inherited money but we don't have a systemic aristocracy, such as still
infests much of Europe.

On a related note, when i was a bookstore clerk, the only people I met
who acted like a hereditary aristocracy toward store clerks were
European professors, European physicians and European medical students.
I know lots of rich jerks but none of them rival the sense of privilage
of a doctor snapping his fingers for attention because I was attending
a "mere nurse."

My manager ran from the back to wait on him. To keep me from hurting
him.

Will in New Haven

--

"I have seen the David, I've seen the Mona Lisa too
And I have heard Doc Watson play 'Columbus Stockade Blues"
Guy Clark - "Dublin Blues"

.

Relevant Pages

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