“Harmful” IMHO consists of direct physical harm, unlawful discrimination against the Equality Act 2010, hate speech and, generally “punching down”, because our society is better than that. Or it should be.
Liberal democracy doesn't have to beg for the right to defend its values. That's my point. Permitting the promotion of fascism is not therefore required.
Are there any grounds that don’t boil down to personal preference by which you can assert that your definition of harm is Right and theirs is Wrong?
Well, sticking with the Nazi example, and looking at countries like Germany where pro-Nazi speech is prohibited, I’d suggest grounds boil down to historical fact about what that speech has led to rather than personal preference.
But let me be absolutely clear on this. I don’t think anyone should be prevented from advocating for any law they think is right. Not even the ones I really disagree with. If someone wants to start a Party that says there should be an annual Purge (as in the movies, sorry I can’t do links on my phone), I don’t think they should be banned from doing so. I earnestly hope they lose, of course, but I don’t think they should be banned.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
Are there any grounds that don’t boil down to personal preference by which you can assert that your definition of harm is Right and theirs is Wrong?
Well, sticking with the Nazi example, and looking at countries like Germany where pro-Nazi speech is prohibited, I’d suggest grounds boil down to historical fact about what that speech has led to rather than personal preference.
But let me be absolutely clear on this. I don’t think anyone should be prevented from advocating for any law they think is right. Not even the ones I really disagree with. If someone wants to start a Party that says there should be an annual Purge (as in the movies, sorry I can’t do links on my phone), I don’t think they should be banned from doing so. I earnestly hope they lose, of course, but I don’t think they should be banned.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
Putting it another way: you can ban Nazis now or have to shoot them later.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you don't protect your society against fascism, you're definitely no better than a collaborator. There are outcomes which no-one deserves to have inflicted on them, even those who lose elections.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
There are lots more ways to oppose something than making it illegal.
The question is how you ensure elections are free and fair.
No. The question is what you think “free and fair” actually means. Does it mean everyone - everyone - is able to advocate for their preferred type of government, or does it not?
Everything else is just noise.
Given how essential "free and fair elections" are to your notion of democracy, one thing that isn't clear to me is whether everyone involved in these elections is required to tell the truth, or whether they're free to lie. Is lying in elections considered to be harmful, or is the only way to determine whether lying in elections is harmful decided "via free and fair elections"?
But let me be absolutely clear on this. I don’t think anyone should be prevented from advocating for any law they think is right. Not even the ones I really disagree with. If someone wants to start a Party that says there should be an annual Purge (as in the movies, sorry I can’t do links on my phone), I don’t think they should be banned from doing so. I earnestly hope they lose, of course, but I don’t think they should be banned.
What if they campaign as the Annual Party party, and only reveal that they're the Annual Purge party after they get into power?
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
As in an answer to a previous question, it sounds like the only defence you envisage against people cheating and winning is hoping that they don't, or hoping that someone will do something about it if they do.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
I think democracy also means assuming that people who want power may be prepared to cheat and lie in order to get it.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
<snip>
What exactly is preventing you, or a group of you, from starting your own newspaper or TV station or podcast or social media platform and using it to promote your own views?
Sure, they’ll use their own platforms to argue against you. They’ll try to discredit you. They may even try to buy you out (though they can’t force you to sell). But they can’t actually stop you.
Put simply, the immense amount of money and, to a lesser extent, time and energy involved means that it is beyond the reach of an average person who has to work to earn a living.
We’ve managed it before. Democracy didn’t come down off a cloud. Trade Unions didn’t create themselves. LGBT+ folk weren’t granted the freedom to be themselves by a fairy with a magic wand. All those things happened because normal, ordinary people decided they were what they wanted, and persuaded enough other normal, ordinary people to support them that eventually they happened.
Nobody ever said it was easy to defeat the Dark Lord without becoming a Dark Lord yourself. But it’s the only way to end up with a society that doesn’t have a Dark Lord at all.
LGBT+ people gained our rights because we fought for them, not because cishet people graciously granted them to us. We threw bricks at police and bashed back at neo-Nazis and died on the steps of government buildings in protest. To suggest that it happened as a natural outcome of liberal democracy is simply not true.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
No, that requires that a person who wishes to make holocaust denial illegal is no better than the people who carried out the holocaust. Which would imply that modern Germany is no better than Nazi Germany.
…Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
It looks like you want to preserve liberal democracy, but you also want to preserve all the mechanisms which have been used to undermine and destroy liberal democracy. Are you just hoping that no-one else uses them this way?
I would hope that the rest of government, the police, the civil service, the armed forces and the population as a whole would step in to ensure that, come the next election, it is held fairly and freely and the result is honoured.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
No, there aren’t. But where are the guarantees in any other system?
Abandoning democracy is like using the Ring of Power. You might do it for the very best of intentions, to defend your people from the Dark Lord, but the temptation to use more and more of the power you have seized to reshape the world according to your desires and compel people to share your beliefs will always be too much, and all you will end up doing is creating another Dark Lord to take his place. The truly wise know that that isn’t an option, and that not doing it, even if it means risking defeat, is nevertheless the only way to truly win freedom.
Wholly agreed here.
I’m sorry if I’m not responding more in depth to all of these posts – there are about 75 more of them than there were the other night and I’m still exhausted after pulling all nighters two days in a row – but Marvin has said things here better than I could right now so all I can do is add “amen.”
…Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
It looks like you want to preserve liberal democracy, but you also want to preserve all the mechanisms which have been used to undermine and destroy liberal democracy. Are you just hoping that no-one else uses them this way?
I would hope that the rest of government, the police, the civil service, the armed forces and the population as a whole would step in to ensure that, come the next election, it is held fairly and freely and the result is honoured.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
No, there aren’t. But where are the guarantees in any other system?
Abandoning democracy is like using the Ring of Power. You might do it for the very best of intentions, to defend your people from the Dark Lord, but the temptation to use more and more of the power you have seized to reshape the world according to your desires and compel people to share your beliefs will always be too much, and all you will end up doing is creating another Dark Lord to take his place. The truly wise know that that isn’t an option, and that not doing it, even if it means risking defeat, is nevertheless the only way to truly win freedom.
Wholly agreed here.
I’m sorry if I’m not responding more in depth to all of these posts – there are about 75 more of them than there were the other night and I’m still exhausted after pulling all nighters two days in a row – but Marvin has said things here better than I could right now so all I can do is add “amen.”
Did you get the scoring done? That is the one thing students overlook. They may have to submit one term paper, but someone has to grade all of them.
Reminds me of a joke. I got my first paper back. The prof wrote: "Interesting." Later I found out that is academia for: "Fail."
I argue the reports of liberal democracy's death are a bit premature. Yes, it has been battered, mocked, neglected and left for dead more times than anyone can count, and it occasionally collapses in a heap of its ow contradictions.
But it reminds me of a phoenix, it will rise after it burns.
Liberal democracy has always been a creature of crisis. It was born out of revolutions, rebuilt many times after wars, reinvented in depressions and revived every time someone declares it extinct.
Why? Because, after the strong man, the chaos merchant, people remember that flawed freedom means more than having the trains run on time.
Liberal democracy may be smoldering now, but like the phoenix, it will rise again. The fire is not the end. It is the beginning of the next version.
On the role of free and fair elections in liberal democracy, I found the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's account of the Nazi Party's rise to power salutary.
Why is liberal democracy such an article of faith?
So what do you have in mind as an alternative?
As an article of faith, I'm not sure anything relating to politics is a good choice. That aside, if you don't want to shake things up too much, you could consider alternatives to majority rule:
In political philosophy, the majority rule is one of two major competing notions of democracy. The most common alternative is given by the utilitarian rule (or other welfarist rules), which identify the spirit of liberal democracy with the equal consideration of interests.
This is like free market economists assu:ing people are rational actors in possessions of perfect information at all times - then wondering why the real world doesn’t act like their models.
If democracy were like free-market economy, I wonder if fascists gaining power would be analogous to a stock market crash.
Soberingly, the first linked article above points out that the Great Depression was a significant part of the context in which the Nazi Party gained power.
I've just read through this thread which may have been a poor choice on a Friday afternoon.
Participating in it has been a bundle of laughs. Thinking about Doublethink's post, one of the things that makes it particularly neuralgic is the way in which the distinction between idealism and pragmatism is treated as as a line to be blurred.
One of my conclusions is that the route to power in the curious ideal/pragmatic world being portrayed is to lie about wanting to preserve liberal democracy.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
The connection between fascists and vulture capitalists is no accident. Both rely on disaster, and on the capacity of crisis to make people exceptionally myopic, allowing the vultures to act unchallenged.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
One of my conclusions is that the route to power in the curious ideal/pragmatic world being portrayed is to lie about wanting to preserve liberal democracy.
The problem is, you seem to think being completely open about wanting to destroy liberal democracy is perfectly fine, as long as what replaces it is what you want.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
And if you genuinely believe that, there are any number of real world struggles against actual attempts by the UK government to create a state of exception.
One of my conclusions is that the route to power in the curious ideal/pragmatic world being portrayed is to lie about wanting to preserve liberal democracy.
The problem is, you seem to think being completely open about wanting to destroy liberal democracy is perfectly fine, as long as what replaces it is what you want.
That's a very strange comment in the context of the twentieth century.
Back in the real world, genocide is not justifiable when it is conducted by a regime that was elected fairly. And we do not consol ourselves when we think back that at least our concept of free and fair democracy survived.
No one snapped up my examples of leftist populists. I will take it a little further. The above thread has discussed how fascism was a populist movement. But I am thinking we need to define what really is a populist movement. At it's most basic core, populism is ordinary people against a self serving elite. Populism defines elitism as corrupt.
The fact is populism is a style, not an ideology. It can attach itself to the left and well as the right and sometimes be in the center. Left populism usually targets economic elites (banks, corporation and oligarchs). Right populism targets cultural or political elites (bureaucrats, academics, media, global institutions). Centrist populism usually claimes "the experts" represent the people better than the politicians.
Frankly, I have never understood how fascism could be considered a populist movement since it is funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers in the US. While Nazism in Germany started with small donations, eventually the likes of Frtiz Thyssen a steel magnate, Emil Kirdorf (coal) and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank took over. Musk funded the last Trump campaign, don't forget.
Dunno if this counts as left-wing populism, but I’m old enough to remember Fred Harris, a US Democratic Senator from Oklahoma. He supported liberal legislation and wrote a book called The New Populism that is described in this section of his Wikipedia page:
…Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
It looks like you want to preserve liberal democracy, but you also want to preserve all the mechanisms which have been used to undermine and destroy liberal democracy. Are you just hoping that no-one else uses them this way?
I would hope that the rest of government, the police, the civil service, the armed forces and the population as a whole would step in to ensure that, come the next election, it is held fairly and freely and the result is honoured.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
No, there aren’t. But where are the guarantees in any other system?
Abandoning democracy is like using the Ring of Power. You might do it for the very best of intentions, to defend your people from the Dark Lord, but the temptation to use more and more of the power you have seized to reshape the world according to your desires and compel people to share your beliefs will always be too much, and all you will end up doing is creating another Dark Lord to take his place. The truly wise know that that isn’t an option, and that not doing it, even if it means risking defeat, is nevertheless the only way to truly win freedom.
Wholly agreed here.
I’m sorry if I’m not responding more in depth to all of these posts – there are about 75 more of them than there were the other night and I’m still exhausted after pulling all nighters two days in a row – but Marvin has said things here better than I could right now so all I can do is add “amen.”
Did you get the scoring done? That is the one thing students overlook. They may have to submit one term paper, but someone has to grade all of them.
Reminds me of a joke. I got my first paper back. The prof wrote: "Interesting." Later I found out that is academia for: "Fail."
I might have posted this in bad jokes before.
Eventually, yes. Pulled several all-nighters, got grades in late, physically and mentally still recovering… Some health issues are slightly worse as a result, ugh, and could use prayers…
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
…Liberal democracy is destroyed by fascism. It just is.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok for anyone else to destroy it.
It looks like you want to preserve liberal democracy, but you also want to preserve all the mechanisms which have been used to undermine and destroy liberal democracy. Are you just hoping that no-one else uses them this way?
I would hope that the rest of government, the police, the civil service, the armed forces and the population as a whole would step in to ensure that, come the next election, it is held fairly and freely and the result is honoured.
I think the people abusing liberal democracy for their own ends are rather counting on that. Maybe it's possible to keep adding checks and balances, or hoping that governments willing to uphold its spirit will come back into favour, but there are no guarantees.
No, there aren’t. But where are the guarantees in any other system?
Abandoning democracy is like using the Ring of Power. You might do it for the very best of intentions, to defend your people from the Dark Lord, but the temptation to use more and more of the power you have seized to reshape the world according to your desires and compel people to share your beliefs will always be too much, and all you will end up doing is creating another Dark Lord to take his place. The truly wise know that that isn’t an option, and that not doing it, even if it means risking defeat, is nevertheless the only way to truly win freedom.
Wholly agreed here.
I’m sorry if I’m not responding more in depth to all of these posts – there are about 75 more of them than there were the other night and I’m still exhausted after pulling all nighters two days in a row – but Marvin has said things here better than I could right now so all I can do is add “amen.”
Did you get the scoring done? That is the one thing students overlook. They may have to submit one term paper, but someone has to grade all of them.
Reminds me of a joke. I got my first paper back. The prof wrote: "Interesting." Later I found out that is academia for: "Fail."
I might have posted this in bad jokes before.
Eventually, yes. Pulled several all-nighters, got grades in late, physically and mentally still recovering… Some health issues are slightly worse as a result, ugh, and could use prayers…
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
Opps. The question raised was about liberal democracies, so I naturally thought it was in the thread concerning liberal democracy. Sometimes two or more threads seem to be talking about the same thing, you know.
Did you get the scoring done? That is the one thing students overlook. They may have to submit one term paper, but someone has to grade all of them.
Eldest child came home from college saying "we have this one new professor, and she's lovely, but I don't think she realized how long it would take her to grade the exam she set". (Or perhaps, "didn't realize how long grading it 50 times would take.")
Glad you have triumphed over the grading, @ChastMastr, and hope you have the time to take for yourself to recover.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
This is one of the great philosophical problems isn't it? Is it better to allow yourself to be killed or become a monster to protect yourself (assuming those are the two choices - we're doing a very black and white binary here which works for my autistic brain but your mileage may vary).
But then of course implicit is a very individualist position; no-one else's interests are taken into account, which is unrealistic. Suppose the question is do I allow my loved one to be killed or become a monster myself to protect them? Might get a different answer.
I stick to my position that there is no way you can absolutely legislate out the possibility of human beings being awful to each other. You take your choice of risks - let everyone do what they like (and it may be awful) or try to moderate the excesses and the resulting taking of power over others may be awful.
There is no way you can stop human beings being awful - you just have a set of choices about whether you would rather risk accepting some culpability yourself while trying to make things better or not.
Apologies for double post: I'm seeing a similarity to the philosophical discussions around the time of Rousseau about whether human beings are inherently good and made corrupt by society (Rousseau) or the opposite (Hobbes?). If you take the Rousseau-ish position, you might put no restrictions on people because you believe people are good and society's restrictions are bad. If you go the opposite way, you would say society's restrictions are what prevent people doing bad things and so (say) limiting some freedoms would be necessary.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
This is one of the great philosophical problems isn't it? Is it better to allow yourself to be killed or become a monster to protect yourself (assuming those are the two choices - we're doing a very black and white binary here which works for my autistic brain but your mileage may vary).
But then of course implicit is a very individualist position; no-one else's interests are taken into account, which is unrealistic. Suppose the question is do I allow my loved one to be killed or become a monster myself to protect them? Might get a different answer.
I stick to my position that there is no way you can absolutely legislate out the possibility of human beings being awful to each other. You take your choice of risks - let everyone do what they like (and it may be awful) or try to moderate the excesses and the resulting taking of power over others may be awful.
There is no way you can stop human beings being awful - you just have a set of choices about whether you would rather risk accepting some culpability yourself while trying to make things better or not.
Which of Númenor's kings was it, on considering war in Middle Earth, asked if it was better to say to Eru "At least I shed no blood" or "At least your enemies were amongst them"?
I have just finished reading a book by the French psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Boris Cyrulnik about group think. I'm not sure if Cyrulnik is well known outside the French speaking world, so for those unfamiliar with him, he was born into a Jewish family in 1937. In 1944, aged 7, he was rounded up by the Nazis in Bordeaux. He managed to escape, but his parents were deported and died in Auschwitz. He spent the rest of the war in hiding under a false name. He says he became a psychiatrist initially to understand his own trauma, and since has tried to understand how psychologically normal, reasonable people can go along with a group narrative to the point of thinking that it's a moral imperative for people like him to be exterminated.
Group think, says Cyrulnik, is about finding belonging in a shared narrative, even one that has no basis in reality. A charismatic leader amplifies the phenomenon. It's a mindset that is threatened by nuance and the difficulty of thinking for oneself. He pushes back on the idea that everyone involved in the Nazi project was an intrinsically bad or evil person because the reality is much more complex and nuanced than that. Indeed "they were all evil" is the kind of oversimplified narrative that group think thrives on. The best way to prevent these kinds of narratives is to create an environment where people, especially young people, feel secure and are able to think for themselves and don't feel threatened by complexity and nuance.
Comments
Well, sticking with the Nazi example, and looking at countries like Germany where pro-Nazi speech is prohibited, I’d suggest grounds boil down to historical fact about what that speech has led to rather than personal preference.
But to be clear, if they don’t lose, then it would seem that by insisting on being a true, pure liberal democracy that allows all views to be advocated, you’ve enabled the destruction of that liberal democracy.
Putting it another way: you can ban Nazis now or have to shoot them later.
That’s a risk, yes. I’m not going to disagree. But I simply don’t believe that betraying my principles is a valid way of preventing anyone else from betraying them. I’d rather play fair and lose than cheat and win.
Ultimately, democracy means trusting the electorate to make the right choice. Or at least to not make an abominable choice. If you’re not prepared to do that - if you think they should be prevented from even the possibility of choosing what you consider to be the wrong thing - then you’re no better than any other dictator.
If you don't act to oppose Nazism you're no better than a collaborator. See, two can play that ridiculous game.
If you are actively arguing for the Nazis being able to spread their message at a time when the far right is resurgent then you are an enabler.
There are lots more ways to oppose something than making it illegal.
What if they campaign as the Annual Party party, and only reveal that they're the Annual Purge party after they get into power?
As in an answer to a previous question, it sounds like the only defence you envisage against people cheating and winning is hoping that they don't, or hoping that someone will do something about it if they do.
I think democracy also means assuming that people who want power may be prepared to cheat and lie in order to get it.
You can’t protect something by destroying it.
What are you if you decide to become a dictator so that nobody else gets to do so?
LGBT+ people gained our rights because we fought for them, not because cishet people graciously granted them to us. We threw bricks at police and bashed back at neo-Nazis and died on the steps of government buildings in protest. To suggest that it happened as a natural outcome of liberal democracy is simply not true.
No, that requires that a person who wishes to make holocaust denial illegal is no better than the people who carried out the holocaust. Which would imply that modern Germany is no better than Nazi Germany.
Wholly agreed here.
I’m sorry if I’m not responding more in depth to all of these posts – there are about 75 more of them than there were the other night and I’m still exhausted after pulling all nighters two days in a row – but Marvin has said things here better than I could right now so all I can do is add “amen.”
Did you get the scoring done? That is the one thing students overlook. They may have to submit one term paper, but someone has to grade all of them.
Reminds me of a joke. I got my first paper back. The prof wrote: "Interesting." Later I found out that is academia for: "Fail."
I might have posted this in bad jokes before.
But it reminds me of a phoenix, it will rise after it burns.
Liberal democracy has always been a creature of crisis. It was born out of revolutions, rebuilt many times after wars, reinvented in depressions and revived every time someone declares it extinct.
Why? Because, after the strong man, the chaos merchant, people remember that flawed freedom means more than having the trains run on time.
Liberal democracy may be smoldering now, but like the phoenix, it will rise again. The fire is not the end. It is the beginning of the next version.
As an article of faith, I'm not sure anything relating to politics is a good choice. That aside, if you don't want to shake things up too much, you could consider alternatives to majority rule: If democracy were like free-market economy, I wonder if fascists gaining power would be analogous to a stock market crash.
Soberingly, the first linked article above points out that the Great Depression was a significant part of the context in which the Nazi Party gained power.
Participating in it has been a bundle of laughs. Thinking about Doublethink's post, one of the things that makes it particularly neuralgic is the way in which the distinction between idealism and pragmatism is treated as as a line to be blurred.
One of my conclusions is that the route to power in the curious ideal/pragmatic world being portrayed is to lie about wanting to preserve liberal democracy.
Yeah man, if things were totally different they'd be different.
You get to tell me "I told you so" before dying for your beliefs, how about that?
Better that than becoming a monster so that the other monster doesn’t kill me.
The problem is, you seem to think being completely open about wanting to destroy liberal democracy is perfectly fine, as long as what replaces it is what you want.
And if you genuinely believe that, there are any number of real world struggles against actual attempts by the UK government to create a state of exception.
As I said, if things were totally different.
That's a very strange comment in the context of the twentieth century.
Back in the real world, genocide is not justifiable when it is conducted by a regime that was elected fairly. And we do not consol ourselves when we think back that at least our concept of free and fair democracy survived.
The fact is populism is a style, not an ideology. It can attach itself to the left and well as the right and sometimes be in the center. Left populism usually targets economic elites (banks, corporation and oligarchs). Right populism targets cultural or political elites (bureaucrats, academics, media, global institutions). Centrist populism usually claimes "the experts" represent the people better than the politicians.
Frankly, I have never understood how fascism could be considered a populist movement since it is funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers in the US. While Nazism in Germany started with small donations, eventually the likes of Frtiz Thyssen a steel magnate, Emil Kirdorf (coal) and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank took over. Musk funded the last Trump campaign, don't forget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_R._Harris?wprov=sfti1#The_New_Populism
Whether populist or New Deal/Great Society Democrat, IMO we really need more people like Fred Harris in public office.
Eventually, yes. Pulled several all-nighters, got grades in late, physically and mentally still recovering… Some health issues are slightly worse as a result, ugh, and could use prayers…
As I so often say in this thread, amen.
You have my prayers for your quick recovery
Um... @Gramps49 ? That was in the other thread: https://forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/6913/why-do-we-seem-to-vote-against-our-best-interests
You have a couple of replies there.
Eldest child came home from college saying "we have this one new professor, and she's lovely, but I don't think she realized how long it would take her to grade the exam she set". (Or perhaps, "didn't realize how long grading it 50 times would take.")
Glad you have triumphed over the grading, @ChastMastr, and hope you have the time to take for yourself to recover.
This is one of the great philosophical problems isn't it? Is it better to allow yourself to be killed or become a monster to protect yourself (assuming those are the two choices - we're doing a very black and white binary here which works for my autistic brain but your mileage may vary).
But then of course implicit is a very individualist position; no-one else's interests are taken into account, which is unrealistic. Suppose the question is do I allow my loved one to be killed or become a monster myself to protect them? Might get a different answer.
I stick to my position that there is no way you can absolutely legislate out the possibility of human beings being awful to each other. You take your choice of risks - let everyone do what they like (and it may be awful) or try to moderate the excesses and the resulting taking of power over others may be awful.
There is no way you can stop human beings being awful - you just have a set of choices about whether you would rather risk accepting some culpability yourself while trying to make things better or not.
Which of Númenor's kings was it, on considering war in Middle Earth, asked if it was better to say to Eru "At least I shed no blood" or "At least your enemies were amongst them"?
Group think, says Cyrulnik, is about finding belonging in a shared narrative, even one that has no basis in reality. A charismatic leader amplifies the phenomenon. It's a mindset that is threatened by nuance and the difficulty of thinking for oneself. He pushes back on the idea that everyone involved in the Nazi project was an intrinsically bad or evil person because the reality is much more complex and nuanced than that. Indeed "they were all evil" is the kind of oversimplified narrative that group think thrives on. The best way to prevent these kinds of narratives is to create an environment where people, especially young people, feel secure and are able to think for themselves and don't feel threatened by complexity and nuance.
I think this argument has a lot going for it.
Golly that's impressive!
I hope Derrida is doing better now.
However, I am soon going to have to host myself for going off topic, so we should probably get back to liberal democracy.