An interesting viewpoint

5 Responses to An interesting viewpoint

1. Sergey says:

   February 13, 2011 at 6:07 am

   Apparently, this guy skipped his Sunday school lessons. Otherwise he may be aware that Bible prohibit quite a lot of “moral crimes”. And preps of those usually punished by death. Ignorance is common between anticommunists…
2. Oleg Volk says:

   February 13, 2011 at 6:11 am

   I was under the impression that he mentioned the Bible in the article.
3. David Dyer-Bennet says:

   February 13, 2011 at 5:33 pm

   His site is so screwed up I can’t post there; everything after the hyphens in my email and website disappears, and then I get an error that I have to fill in an email address!

   Boy, he’s sure seeing the world through narrow glasses. The left HAS acted from moral motives — in, for example, passing the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. For liberals of my age, those were really huge victories, and an important part of our political formation. What we learned: that some problems can only be solved (in our system) by application of Federal Law. We acted to stop the state (mostly individual states) oppression of a large class of people, and did significant good with it. Not perfect, there are still problems, and so forth. But we saw the biggest improvement in individual rights made in our lifetimes accomplished by Federal power.

   But mostly we don’t; we act from pragmatic motives. Badly educated people are not good for themselves, the economy, or their neighbors. Homeless people clearly need help, and if they can get to the point of being self-supporting, even better. Smoking is absolutely clearly bad for you (cigarettes were called “gaspers” in British slang 100 years ago; everybody knew they reduced your lung capacity) and everybody around you. We’re very close to creating a world-wide economic and humanitarian disaster of a scale previously never approached with our pollution; possibly one big enough to end technological civilization forever.

   Hard to get us to accept that government is an unmitigated evil. Which I think a lot of the loud libertarian component takes as an axiom. It’s hard to communicate across that kind of boundary. You see us as trying to create an authoritarian system, and we see you as trying to destroy the things that keep our society tolerable (like consumer protection laws and laws against pollution). Hard to communicate across that kind of barrier, and we keep raising them higher.

   (I’m a left libertarian; my liberal friends find my weird and politically questionable because I’m a libertarian, my libertarian friends find me weird and politically questionable because I’m a liberal.)
4. Weston says:

   February 14, 2011 at 12:48 pm

   Saying that every tiny move in “social justice” is a move towards communism would be like saying that every small move of the right in the opposite direction is a move towards fascism. If you can only view the world relative to extremes, then everyone is either Hitler or Stalin.
5. Lyle says:

   February 15, 2011 at 10:46 pm

   How’d they do it? Two words; Public Education.

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