Positive rights vs negative rights & how that may or may not apply to our current situation

wrath
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I’m sure that this isn’t true of everyone, but my political philosophy and the way I vote/the laws I support aren’t identical. My political philosophy is based on how I think things ought to work in a perfect world. My actual political actions, like who and what I vote for, take into account the fact that the world is very far from perfect.

Shit, in an ideal world, everyone would be moral and no one would hurt each other other, so there wouldn’t be much point in outlawing murder, since it would never happen. But that’s just not how the world is.

Pretty much anyone who always acts strictly according to one philosophy, no matter what the situation, needs a reality check.

But @cowicide, I don’t think that libertarians are any more naive than authoritarians, anarchists, Marxists, or many of the other non-centrist political ideologies. I hope you agree with that, but I feel like you have a particular grudge against libertarians, maybe because they’ve been getting more and more politically active.

And this is just an anecdote, but I know a lady who is libertarian. A large part of the reason why is her brother who, when he was dying of cancer, experienced the bullshit laws regarding medical marijuana at the time. I think that in some ways, you would agree with libertarians when it comes to personal freedoms.

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I have no idea where you got the idea I support turning away from the world. Or, do you really think not voting is equivalent to becoming a cave dwelling hermit? Hyperbole and projection… You have failed at simple reasoning.

Quite the opposite. I see voters as idealists who have decided to live in a fantasy world. A realist sees the world as it is and right now we are a corporatist oligarchy. My approach is to behave accordingly. Under the current system of governance, it is how you spend your money that has the greatest impact.

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I think the reason why your debate with this libertarian (do you actually even know what that means?) is unproductive is the simple fact that thus far you have proven yourself incapable of forming a cogent thesis. Nor have you demonstrated the ability to understand the issue outside your current paradigm and would rather keep beating your partisan drum for your hatred of Republicans and how not voting creates more of them. This argument in particular is indicative of a person who has so indoctrinated themselves in a system of fantasy as to be incapable of reason. You fail to see the assumptive nature of your dogma.

Of course not. Any real world alternative to voting is something you see as harmful since it ushers in more Republicans. You reject the notion of not voting and the idea of focusing efforts on what you can do since it does not involve participating in your paradigm. You dismiss alternate views as unicorns and platitudes without giving reason. You claim I am ignoring current realities though I and many others have demonstrated that the republic is a fantasy and oligarchy is the real current system. I submit it is you who are living in the fantasy world, one you cling to so tightly that you accuse others of causing harm when they either don’t vote due to their personal sense of morality and principled reasoning or those who simply don’t vote the way you think they should without acknowledging that others see any voting as immoral.

[quote=“Cowicide, post:18, topic:32307”]
It’s interesting that you offer your concern for the stripping of human rights by proxy, but still can’t see how you do that (by proxy) by not voting and ushering in Republicans who are absolutely notorious for stripping human rights from citizens. Even our very basic right to vote in the first place. [/quote]
Your logic is strained to the point of hilarity here. You actually argue that by not participating in a thing one becomes responsible for harm done by that thing. Do you really expect anyone to take that seriously? Basically, you are saying that everyone who doesn’t vote Democrat is evil and causing harm yet you have repeatedly stated that your are not partisan. It’s all very childish. Take stock man. I think you are in conflict with yourself.
I tried, I really did, but you simply aren’t up to the task of presenting your thoughts in a logical manner. Assumptive conclusions aren’t actually thesis. As you are not capable of discussion but only regurgitation, you don’t seem like someone I should waste my time engaging with.
Are there any adults in the room?

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24

I think that when some intelligent people are young they get into a mindset that sees syntactically logical truth as comforting and the messiness of the real world as threatening. Some grow out of it, some don’t. Personally, I got used to being under threat worse than bad arguments, so the emotional threat of arguments failing in nature in general always seemed a bit pale compared to the threat of placing argument above the practicalities people face in staying physically whole.

So, yeah, it can be a side effect of Asperger-ey conditions, but it isn’t a necessary outcome. I’ve seen it also result from the kind of privilege that doesn’t allow one to understand just exactly how constrained people are when they don’t have family resources to fall back on.

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Voting in our imperfect democracy does not preclude acknowledging its corruption by oligarchies.

Throwing syllogisms at the wall to see if they stick is indeed very simple reasoning, so I don’t do it. Is rolling my eyes “failure”?

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If one acknowledges the corruption how can one reconcile the tacit support of corruption a vote would represent?

I like the imagery of “Throwing syllogisms at the wall to see if they stick”. It’s just too bad you can’t combine that imagery with more than flawed reasoning. Actually, I’ve noticed the eye roll is almost exclusively employed by those without the capacity to fully express themselves. They haven’t the ability to form a cogent thought and lack the tools to communicate them. I’ve also seen the way a cow dies in the slaughterhouse. Rolling the eyes is the last thing they do before being carried off to be made into my lunch.

Syllogisms are basic logic at work. If I’ve presented a syllogistic fallacy, please point it out. Your fallacy is easy to spot. You stated I have a “desire to run away from the messiness of the world”. A conclusion drawn from thin air in order to diminish my argument by painting my personal failures as evidence that the non-political route of influence through intelligent market choice can be discounted. You then attempt to draw conclusion based on your fallacy that non-political route of calls for people to withdraw from society.

Reading some of your previous posts, I actually held some hope that you may be capable of reason but I now see you aren’t up to it.

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“its corruption by oligarchies” does not logically mean “entirely corrupted,” “irreversibly corrupted”, or even “substantially corrupted”. The fact that you conflate the marginal with the categorical says a lot about your relationship to logic as well as your relationship to the outside world.

Libertarianism shouldn’t rely on this confusion of marginal and categorical, but the contemporary libertarian pose definitely does rely on this mistake. It’s become impossible to discuss libertarian principles precisely because of the way this confusion takes over the discussion. From what I’ve seen in the last twenty years, libertarianism has been almost entirely corrupted by the inane results of this logical error. How ironic that this substantial corruption of libertarianism plays right into the hands of oligarchic elites.

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28

Then you should have led with that. As it is you keep making statements about what differences do or don’t exist between American parties, what voting accomplishes, what it stops people from doing, and so on, that are all things evidence pertains to and rather disagrees with you on. But here you’re saying you don’t even care; voting is never moral to you no matter what it does.

So why do you keep making statements of fact if you’re not interested in them? Just say you don’t care how many people voting might or might not help, you still think it’s immoral, and I can say my principles are more pragmatic and move on. But whether voting does ever manage to affect change is not a values question, and your dismissing evidence pertaining to it in favor of assumption is leading you into mistakes.

Increasingly I’m seeing a new one: party A has links and citations to back up an opinion. Party B has none, but insists that evidence is meaningless. From what I can tell, this form of debate is completely useless, and usually serves to cover up a failure of party B to consider the possibility their presuppositions are wrong much more than the competing-evidences form.

That’s not reasoned discourse to me, it’s restricting the field of discourse in a way to make it impossible to show conflicts with reality. To me that’s the most important part of an argument, some way to tell when someone is wrong. You’re insisting you shouldn’t be held to any, even on statements that pertain not to morality but to real-world effects; I’ve seen the nonsense that allows and I’m not granting it.

And boasts that your approach is the only sensible one, and the only way someone might ever disagree with you is incapacity for logic, just reinforces how little merit it actually has. :unamused:

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You are correct. Corruption does not always mean entirely, irreversibly, or substantially. Yet I think it would be hard to argue that in the case of the U.S. political system the corruption can be reversed. After all, the only people with the power to make the changes necessary are the very ones who benefit from the corruption. Or are there bills making headway which seek to eliminate or substantially reduce corporate campaign donations, or bills to impose term limits, or bills to eliminate gerrymandering. There must be bills out there to reduce corporate welfare or at least bills to make sure corporations don’t hide their profits overseas to reduce taxes all the while benefiting from the same country they seek to defraud?

I also question your assertion that the corruption can be viewed as marginal. You may have read the reports that most congresscritters don’t actually read the laws they vote upon. You may have also read the reports that a large majority of our laws are actually written by special interest groups and are presented to our legislators through lobbyists. The bills introduced today are sponsored by politicians who haven’t the foggiest idea what they are sponsoring. Is that is what you consider marginal corruption?

That’s going to need to be filed away as a rhetorical question. Of course you support the corruption. You are one of the ones who voted to make it happen and you think it’s a marginal problem.

When a republic becomes an oligarchy, degrees of corruption become irrelevant.

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[quote=“chenille, post:28, topic:32307”]
As it is you keep making statements about what differences do or don’t exist between American parties,
[/quote]As it is you keep making statements about what differences do or don’t exist between American parties

Necessitated by responding to Cowicides deeply partisan slant.

Chanille, that you have not yet presented an actual argument against my thesis, that you have presented no thesis in counter, that you focus on rejecting my proposed format of a values debate, and that you seem unaware of the validity of values based debate does a good job of demonstrating why you aren’t equipped to engage in this sort of discussion. There are plenty of people out there who enjoy a debate of URLs and stats. There are plenty of topics in which that sort of discourse is called for. Perhaps you should find one. Otherwise, present your thesis or objection to my own instead of trying to give me reasons I should engage in evidentiary debate. I’ve presented my reasons for wanting to discuss this topic in a well honored and respected format. If that format is not to your liking, move on.

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That’s because I haven’t even had a chance to disagree with your thesis that voting can never be moral, which I’ve only seen now, but have been disagreeing with your many statements about what voting does in reality that it was seemingly based on.

If you want me to engage in a moral argument, it would be that allowing others to come to harm in cases where there is an easy way to prevent it is immoral, when that way does not offer greater damage. That seems obvious to me. If you disagree I think our assumptions our too different to reconcile; if you agree, that leaves the question of when voting might satisfy those properties, which is an evidentiary debate. So I’m not sure what you want from me.

I can say what I’d like from you, though: stop claiming voting has some special pernicious effects and then turning around and saying you won’t justify their existence. If you don’t want to engage in evidentiary debate, fine, but then stop making statements that are questions of evidence.

Oh, and while I’m dreaming: stop imagining that everyone who doesn’t think your approach is the right one does so out of some kind of incapacity. When you start saying that to one person after another, I’d hope you might have the self-awareness to consider that maybe they’re not the ones who are missing something.

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Imagine a fantasy world, your fantasy of a world free of oligarchic corruption. How does it function and who rules and how do they rule? Any voting going on? Discuss. Then describe some way to get to your dreamland from the partly corrupt, partly oligarchic, partly dictatorial, partly transparent, partly democratic, partly checked system we have. Try to keep in mind your disability in distinguishing the marginal and the categorical.

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My fantasy world huh? Who said I think a corporatist oligarchy isn’t a perfectly viable system? Your pre-conceptions and bias do not serve you well.

The incapacity I’ve pointed out is not a matter of agreement. I’m fine with disagreement. However, thus far you have failed to present your thesis as to why voting is not immoral or how voting is even positive. All you have done is select a section of my posts, make false assumptions about them, and then proceed to explain how that section is wrong based on your false assumptions. You seem only capable of refutation of other peoples thoughts which is simply and argumentative tactic and does not, in and of itself, represent an actual argument or even a cogent point of view other than that of a contrarian. By continuing in this manner, you demonstrate a lack of capacity for the discussion.

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But @cowicide, I don’t think that libertarians are any more naive than authoritarians, anarchists, Marxists, or many of the other non-centrist political ideologies.

I think anyone is capable of being naive if they adhere to a strict doctrine that ignores certain realities and externalities. But, in my experiences, libertarians tend to be a different breed. I often have trouble detecting an anarchist or Marxist or whatever until they tell me that’s their ideology. On the other hand, I usually know I’m talking with a libertarian far before they let me in on it.

Of course, not every libertarian or self-professed libertarian is going to be the same, but there certainly are trends among many of them.

I think that in some ways, you would agree with libertarians when it comes to personal freedoms.

Most definitely, but (depending on the libertarian) I think we often tend to come to the same conclusions for different reasons.

I have offline friends that are libertarians or lean that way. We fight like cats and dogs, but in the end I still like them as good people overall (with some exceptions here and there). I’ve also met some libertarians that I had to walk away from because they are rotten, selfish, pompous assholes (which can be an unfortunate tendency on their part).

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Your retreat into obscurity as a defense against logic, facts, and, apparently, morality, is fundamentally a pose. It’s not a flattering one. Not logical, factual, moral, or even cool. Your only alternative to climbing down from your bedroom window is to openly declare yourself a trolley and go up with the rest of the house. You’re right on the edge of that, so I’m going to assume that self-immolation was your plan all along.

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I think the reason why your debate with this libertarian (do you actually even know what that means?)

Is there a libertarian guide for this procedure? When all else fails… resort to a trite, insulting, distracting, semantic argument on what libertarianism means.

Sorry, but I’m not falling for it.

you have proven yourself incapable of forming a cogent thesis.

Blatant projection.

Nor have you demonstrated the ability to understand the issue outside your current paradigm

Reality isn’t my created paradigm, but thank you for assuming I’m God-like. :wink:

a person who has so indoctrinated themselves in a system of fantasy as to be incapable of reason. You fail to see the assumptive nature of your dogma. … I submit it is you who are living in the fantasy world … Your logic is strained to the point of hilarity here. … It’s all very childish. Take stock man. I think you are in conflict with yourself.

Yet more blatant projection.

would rather keep beating your partisan drum for your hatred of Republicans and how not voting creates more of them.

I’ve explained to you repeatedly how I’m not a partisan, but you refuse to address it… at all. You don’t even entertain my own concept of myself and who I am as a person and what I believe.

That’s amazingly pretentious and the very example of rigid thinking that you profess to loathe.

Also, stating facts backed up with evidence and American history that clearly shows how “not voting” ushers in more Republicans that thwart future third party growth isn’t beating a partisan drum.

How is wanting third parties (I haven’t even named) to unseat both Democrats and Republicans beating a partisan drum? You’re being delusional again.

Any real world alternative to voting is something you see as harmful since it ushers in more Republicans.

That’s your over-simplistic mentality speaking again. The problem is you haven’t offered any real world alternative to voting. If you offered a real world alternative to voting that can work within our current reality and it wouldn’t have the negative effects of creating more wars and losses of civil rights, etc. – Then I’d be all for it.

But you haven’t offered any real world alternative. Just platitudes, insults against my intelligence to not be able to comprehend your genius (or libertarian books) and an unhealthy aversion to suppositions based upon evidence. And, throwing out a percentage that was completely wrong and using it as false evidence while never having the dignity to even admit that mistake and move on from it (and maybe even learn from it as well).

You dismiss alternate views as unicorns and platitudes without giving reason.

That’s delusional. I’ve given you reasons repeatedly and, unlike you, I see the need to back up my reasons with evidence, American history, etc.

You actually argue that by not participating in a thing one becomes responsible for harm done by that thing.

No, that’s an over-simplistic, delusional distortion of my arguments. If you want to see what I actually argue, go back and read my posts.

Do you really expect anyone to take that seriously?

An over-simplistic, delusional distortion of my arguments? Of course not.

Basically, you are saying that everyone who doesn’t vote Democrat is evil

No, that’s an over-simplistic, delusional distortion of my arguments. If you want to see what I actually argue, go back and read my posts here and within the previous thread that includes voting for third parties among many other externalities I’ve mentioned that didn’t involve calling anyone “evil” for not voting for Democrats.

Why continue to resort to over-simplistic drivel? Between this and the ever increasing insults, you’re really embarrassing yourself.

I tried, I really did

That delusional. You didn’t try. See above where I mention that you keep telling me what I believe instead of listening to my own opinion on myself, for example.

you simply aren’t up to the task of presenting your thoughts in a logical manner.

If presenting suppositions based upon evidence isn’t logical in your fantastical world, then you’re correct, I’m not up to the task.

Assumptive conclusions aren’t actually thesis. … Are there any adults in the room?

I didn’t present conclusions for the most part. I presented suppositions based upon evidence.

Meanwhile, you seem more interested in attacking my mental abilities than my ideas and evidence I present. Or, rather, once your attack of my evidence failed miserably, you’ve now resorted to a full-blown, infantile, tirade against me personally.

Sorry, but that kind of distraction doesn’t work on me. Provide evidence.

I’m still waiting for your evidence. And not anything based upon fictitious percentages and the like that you pompously refuse to account for.

you don’t seem like someone I should waste my time engaging with.

You’d clearly be happier within a libertarian message board where everyone will mirror or parrot back your own baseless platitudes to you.

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It’s hard to argue with the “when it counts, vote 3rd party” camp. Each US state has its own dynamics, like where I live which has been shifting from a red to battleground state. My hunch is that when systems reach a political breaking point, they are ripe for third parties to step in and make a difference.

This thread has so much potential, maybe we should all reset and approach it from a different angle.

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I feel exactly the same. My political ideologies and my views aren’t the same as most of the people on this BBS, and I don’t think that this news is really shocking anybody. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t agree with BoingBoingers on a lot of issues. Besides which, I like to think that I’m a reasonable person who likes to listen to intelligent debate.

This thread seems to be more about discrediting each other than listening and thinking about the validity of other viewpoints, and it’s a shame.

My state also used to be red, but has become a battleground state within the last few elections, and I’ve grown to appreciate third parties more and more.

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What the hell does any of this have to do with the Republican party? Are we picking teams in the voting space or are we talking about voting from an external perspective? And which faction of the Republican party are we pulling for? Apparently some people on both sides of this “debate” are equating a desire for voting with not-Republicans? Their stated policies in restricting the franchise (Republican nitwits) notwithstanding, isn’t that quite an abstraction from the passive acceptance of oligarchy promoted by the lovers of not-voting? Maybe those stated policies in restricting the franchise are relevant but avoided at all costs because voting is considered a right necessary for contemporary non-violent civilization?

Apparently, the non-elected security apparatus that relies on Fort Meade for contracts has a social media budget. Cue outraged gasps of “Forfend!” Also backpedaling, and spontaneous social-media-combustion.

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So far I have attempted to present my position that voting is immoral and that an alternative to voting that directly addresses the current system of a corporatist oligarchy by participation through wise and informed spending is a viable alternative. It’s a simple two part proposition and I’ve provided my reasoning behind it.

The general responses have been muddied and messy.

I’ve seen argumentative tactic and attempts to discredit which is disappointing. What I have not seen is an argument against that position.

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