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George Will wrangles with God, the conservative sensibility ...

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  • #16
    Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
    I'm saying that an unrestrained government acts against majorities and minorities.

    The Constitution is designed to limit the powers of the US government. The problem of power in the government is its ability to oppress everyone if it is not limited in power. This is what we have seen in the USSR, Nazi Germany and China.

    You seem to see some problem inherent to the design of the Constitution that causes discrimination of minorities.

    Are you asking for these protections for all people to be removed? Are you asking for a different form of government? If so, what is going to stop that form of government from being oppressive to minorities?
    I never said anything here about the Constitution. I apologize but I'm not following how your questions are related to what I wrote earlier. I would have liked the US constitution to be more protective of minorities (and all individuals) from the start but even within the limits of the Constitution, we've routinely seen the "conservative" position in American history played out not as a matter of liberty-generating chaos but quite oppressive of minorities so that majorities could operate as they want with the perception of safety or immunity.

    --Sam
    "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
      Then stop reading the Communist's Book of American History.
      vs.

      I could have appreciated some reasoned discussion on this.
      Your foot is bleeding.

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
        vs.



        Your foot is bleeding.
        Thanks for your input.

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by Sam View Post
          I never said anything here about the Constitution. I apologize but I'm not following how your questions are related to what I wrote earlier. I would have liked the US constitution to be more protective of minorities (and all individuals) from the start but even within the limits of the Constitution, we've routinely seen the "conservative" position in American history played out not as a matter of liberty-generating chaos but quite oppressive of minorities so that majorities could operate as they want with the perception of safety or immunity.

          --Sam
          It seems like we are talking about two unrelated topics. I guess we an leave it at that.

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by Juvenal View Post


            I went looking for this after seeing an excerpt featuring Trump (beginning at 10:15) in a Post op/ed, but the full video is a refreshing reminder of how conservatism no longer finds a reflection in the Republican Party.
            Um, this guy seems to be a libertarian rather than a conservative. And also a nutter.

            He starts out by putting forward a pretty unlikely theory about why he thinks the public's faith in government has declined, then he gives utterly insane definitions of liberal and conservative... and things don't really get any better from then on.

            I feel it's pretty safe to say that not merely does current US conservationism not match to George Will's views, but that no conservationism anywhere in history has ever matched to his views... he seems like quite an original and independent thinker (by which I mean crazy).
            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
              I'm saying that an unrestrained government acts against majorities and minorities.

              The Constitution is designed to limit the powers of the US government. The problem of power in the government is its ability to oppress everyone if it is not limited in power. This is what we have seen in the USSR, Nazi Germany and China.

              You seem to see some problem inherent to the design of the Constitution that causes discrimination of minorities.

              Are you asking for these protections for all people to be removed? Are you asking for a different form of government? If so, what is going to stop that form of government from being oppressive to minorities?
              You've got this backward.

              In the absence of any governing authority, those who have the power and will to oppress others will do so. There was slavery long before there was government. Those men who have the power and will to oppress others to their own advantage will do so unless there is a greater power that is stopping them. So throughout history, men have made others their slaves and cruelly ruled over them.

              Pretty much the worst possible system is thus no government, in which the strong do as they will to others and there are no limits on their powers. Those who have wealth or strength can gather men to themselves and form a militia and go out and rape and pillage and take slaves. In the absence of a strong governing authority such warlords and mafia bosses readily make themselves apparent and their influence felt, and everyone else suffers.

              Even today we see this in countries where the central government has collapsed, and the country subsequently devolves into control by competing warlords or cartel bosses or factions. Slavery, rape, murder and civil war are all common in these contexts. This is among the worst ways a society can exist, and it arises when no central governing body exists that is capable of exerting a sufficient level of control of those who have the will and power to hurt others. When someone's private army is more powerful than that of the government, they can do as they will to others around them. When the government's enforcement of the law is sufficiently weak, those who wish to do so can get away with harming and killing those they wish to and profiting themselves by it, as a mafia boss does. So it is very definitely terrible to have either no government, or a weak government that lacks the power to enforce its will.

              In the US at the founding, you had slavery. That was a different situation - you had a government, but the government chose not to take action to outlaw man owning their fellow man. It wasn't that the government itself did slavery: The government didn't own the slaves, it didn't require people to own slaves. The slavery was all privately owned and operated with the owners having it be entirely their own individual choice as to whether to own slaves, it being in no way required of them by the government. But the government didn't act to prevent this abuse of man by their fellow man, and in this sense it was like having no government at all - it was the same inhumanity that would have happened without a government.

              And, to some extent, in the initial USA, slavery was occurring not merely because the government lacked the will to prevent it, but because it lacked the power to do so. When the government eventually tried to end slavery, it resulted in a massive civil war, demonstrating that the government of the time didn't really have the physical power to enforce its will in this instance.

              So I think it's fair to say that historically in human history in general, and more specifically in the US's case, most wrongdoing and horrific acts have stemmed from a lack of any government to prevent them, or a weak government that lacked the power to prevent them.

              You cite, however, three instances in history (out of all of history), where a government that was strong decided to use its power to do terrible things. I agree that can certainly happen. It does not, however, seem to occur with anything remotely close to the frequency with which terrible things happen if the government isn't there to stop them. Your fear of the smaller danger, and subsequent willingness to embrace the larger danger, strikes me as absurd. It's like saying you're unwilling to light a fire in order to keep warm because you're afraid the fire might burn you, so instead your solution is to jump into a volcano to keep warm. You are rejecting something that works well most the time and is rarely harmful in favor of something that is absolutely always harmful.

              Should we design rules and safeguards to try and stop governments using their power to do terrible things? Sure. Just like we should put safeguards around a fire where appropriate. But the solution is absolutely not to destroy government or government's power. For every one bad thing a government does, there are thousands of individuals in the population who would murder other people or rape them or enslave them if they thought they could do it and get away with it without the government stopping them. The actions of the populace are, in general, far far worse than the actions of governments. And the government needs to have sufficient strength and power to stop those horrific actions by private individuals and private companies.
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
                I could have appreciated some reasoned discussion on this.
                The (small-l) libertarian axiom is that government is a necessary evil, ergo the fundamental political task is to constrain its evil. Whereas from Scripture and common sense, government is a necessary good, even though sometimes it can become completely corrupted from its intended design.
                Last edited by demi-conservative; 10-13-2019, 04:01 AM.
                Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
                  I agree with the interest in returning to the intent of the Founding Fathers of the country.
                  Do you agree with no votes for blacks, women, and other groups? Slavery still permissible?

                  Otherwise aren't you just picking and choosing which of the intents you like, as the liberals do?
                  Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
                    I went looking for this after seeing an excerpt featuring Trump (beginning at 10:15) in a Post op/ed, but the full video is a refreshing reminder of how conservatism no longer finds a reflection in the Republican Party.
                    So much whining from Never-Trump conservatives. They complain that Trump is weak, inept and very flawed, and then whine about how he has taken the Republican party from them.

                    If Trump is that weak, inept and flawed, why did they and their conservatism lose to the outsider Trump? Clearly they and their conservatism are so weak to be worthless, and have rightly been garbaged.
                    Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Sam View Post
                      I have been saying for several years, though, that the conservative movement's response to Donald Trump, as soon as he becomes perceived as a liability, will be that he was a New York liberal who hijacked the pure conservative movement and snuck in big government policy. In this, Will's voice will pave the way.

                      --Sam
                      The ‘Never Trump’ Coalition That Decided Eh, Never Mind, He’s Fine
                      They signed open letters, dedicated a special magazine issue to criticism of him and swore he would tear at the fabric of this nation. Now they have become the president’s strongest defenders.

                      By Jeremy W. Peters
                      Oct. 5, 2019
                      WASHINGTON — In 2016, Erick Erickson could not have been clearer. Donald Trump was “a racist” and “a fascist.” It was no wonder, Mr. Erickson wrote, that “so many people with swastikas in their Twitter profile pics” supported him. “I will not vote for Donald Trump. Ever,” he insisted, adding his voice to the chorus of Never Trump Republicans.

                      This past week, Mr. Erickson, a well-known conservative blogger, titled one of his pieces “I Support the President.” In three years, he had come completely around, a transformation that is a testament to President Trump’s remarkable consolidation of support inside the Republican Party. The effort to impeach the president, Mr. Erickson wrote, was a desperate move by people “who have never come to terms with him.”

                      “Never Trump” no more, conservatives have largely resigned themselves to a more accommodating state of mind: “Never mind Trump.” And their change in attitude helps to mute the much smaller group of conservative voices who remain highly critical of the president and have questioned his conduct.

                      It bears noting that two of the voices elevated in this piece are Erickson and Beck, neither of whom have the gravitas of Will, both having studiously, if you'll pardon the deliberate mal mot, avoided the interactions with political opponents that have honed Will's steel across the decades.

                      A third, L. Brent Bozell III, is unapologetically opportunistic.
                      There is significant exposure in airing even the most mild criticism of the president, as Mr. Bozell was reminded the other day when he pointed out on Twitter that China, which Mr. Trump had just congratulated on its 70th anniversary as a communist republic, was a repressive regime.

                      “The fury is absolutely there for anyone who criticizes this president,” he said. Still, he offered nothing but scorn for the few remaining Never Trump Republicans, whom he accused of being self-righteous and politically shortsighted. “For a lot of the purists, they would rather go down in flames than look at any political equation,” he said. “These are the people who supported George W. Bush when he did nothing for conservatives, and they don’t have any leg to stand on when it comes to passing judgment on Trump.”

                      There will be a fire-tested cadre of conservatives still standing after the collapse, but their marginal existence inside the Republican party, as I've been saying for years, is over.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
                        The ‘Never Trump’ Coalition That Decided Eh, Never Mind, He’s Fine
                        They signed open letters, dedicated a special magazine issue to criticism of him and swore he would tear at the fabric of this nation. Now they have become the president’s strongest defenders.

                        By Jeremy W. Peters
                        Oct. 5, 2019
                        WASHINGTON — In 2016, Erick Erickson could not have been clearer. Donald Trump was “a racist” and “a fascist.” It was no wonder, Mr. Erickson wrote, that “so many people with swastikas in their Twitter profile pics” supported him. “I will not vote for Donald Trump. Ever,” he insisted, adding his voice to the chorus of Never Trump Republicans.

                        This past week, Mr. Erickson, a well-known conservative blogger, titled one of his pieces “I Support the President.” In three years, he had come completely around, a transformation that is a testament to President Trump’s remarkable consolidation of support inside the Republican Party. The effort to impeach the president, Mr. Erickson wrote, was a desperate move by people “who have never come to terms with him.”

                        “Never Trump” no more, conservatives have largely resigned themselves to a more accommodating state of mind: “Never mind Trump.” And their change in attitude helps to mute the much smaller group of conservative voices who remain highly critical of the president and have questioned his conduct.

                        It bears noting that two of the voices elevated in this piece are Erickson and Beck, neither of whom have the gravitas of Will, both having studiously, if you'll pardon the deliberate mal mot, avoided the interactions with political opponents that have honed Will's steel across the decades.

                        A third, L. Brent Bozell III, is unapologetically opportunistic.
                        There is significant exposure in airing even the most mild criticism of the president, as Mr. Bozell was reminded the other day when he pointed out on Twitter that China, which Mr. Trump had just congratulated on its 70th anniversary as a communist republic, was a repressive regime.

                        “The fury is absolutely there for anyone who criticizes this president,” he said. Still, he offered nothing but scorn for the few remaining Never Trump Republicans, whom he accused of being self-righteous and politically shortsighted. “For a lot of the purists, they would rather go down in flames than look at any political equation,” he said. “These are the people who supported George W. Bush when he did nothing for conservatives, and they don’t have any leg to stand on when it comes to passing judgment on Trump.”

                        There will be a fire-tested cadre of conservatives still standing after the collapse, but their marginal existence inside the Republican party, as I've been saying for years, is over.

                        Trumpism will remain, I agree (not least because it predated Trump himself), but I see Erickson, Beck, and Bozell as evidence of the future disavowing of Trump: they all already turned "anti-Trump", then came back around when their revenue started drying up. They'll turn again, inventing some reason why it was gracious of them to give Trump a chance after a promising first two years and how he totally imploded and reverted back to his NYC liberal ways when faced with a Democratic Congress.

                        It'll be nonsense, of course, but I think Trump will end up being jettisoned at the same speed Bush was - maybe right around the point it's time to start caring about deficits again. That's my over/under, at least.

                        --Sam
                        "I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Sam View Post
                          [...] maybe right around the point it's time to start caring about deficits again ...
                          Zing.

                          W. inherited a surplus and immediately set about eliminating it, ostensibly because it was "our money" but apparently not "our debt." It was an open secret, though, that those deficits were deliberate, a means of raising the debt to a level sufficient to justify cutting social programs.

                          The thing about historically low interest rates is that history suggests they're short lived.

                          Where conservatives see this as a caution, Republicans see it as an opportunity.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            In the US at the founding, you had slavery. That was a different situation - you had a government, but the government chose not to take action to outlaw man owning their fellow man. It wasn't that the government itself did slavery: The government didn't own the slaves, it didn't require people to own slaves. The slavery was all privately owned and operated with the owners having it be entirely their own individual choice as to whether to own slaves, it being in no way required of them by the government. But the government didn't act to prevent this abuse of man by their fellow man, and in this sense it was like having no government at all - it was the same inhumanity that would have happened without a government.
                            I am not fully sure of this--at least in the US. It's true the government didn't require people to own slaves, but it did enforce slavery. That is, it required people to turn over escaped slaves, had border patrols work to try to stop slaves from getting to free states (and later, getting to Canada), etc. Slavery involves a cost that normal employment doesn't: You have to pay for all the security stop the slaves from escaping and also to catch the slaves that do escape. But this government enforcement of slavery cuts the security costs by a good amount. I've seen it argued that it was only because of this government enforcement of slavery that slavery actually worked economically at all.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by demi-conservative View Post
                              The (small-l) libertarian axiom is that government is a necessary evil, ergo the fundamental political task is to constrain its evil. Whereas from Scripture and common sense, government is a necessary good, even though sometimes it can become completely corrupted from its intended design.
                              I would stick the necessary evil until we have predominance of the theocracy. Scripture promoted the theocracy as the best alternative for the people of Israel. And, Dan 7 showed the demise of empires that were exalting themselves. Since governments have people in leadership, there is always an evil component.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                                You've got this backward.

                                In the absence of any governing authority, those who have the power and will to oppress others will do so. There was slavery long before there was government. Those men who have the power and will to oppress others to their own advantage will do so unless there is a greater power that is stopping them. So throughout history, men have made others their slaves and cruelly ruled over them.
                                ...
                                Should we design rules and safeguards to try and stop governments using their power to do terrible things? Sure. Just like we should put safeguards around a fire where appropriate. But the solution is absolutely not to destroy government or government's power. For every one bad thing a government does, there are thousands of individuals in the population who would murder other people or rape them or enslave them if they thought they could do it and get away with it without the government stopping them. The actions of the populace are, in general, far far worse than the actions of governments. And the government needs to have sufficient strength and power to stop those horrific actions by private individuals and private companies.
                                You are failing to take into account several things First, the states have wide ability to make autonomous laws. The other is that we did have the war was fought which was bringing an end to slavery. So there are reactions that bring about certain changes.

                                You just simply disregard the ability of state governments to do some junk that you advocate. Then, if one state is enslaving people under unconscionable taxes, you are able to go to a different state. Your interpretation seems to focus on the existence of only two alternatives: no government or oppressively powerful government. The US design mainly just limits the least useful level of laws for daily living -- the country-level laws.

                                Comment

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