[Peace-discuss] Would It Kill Us to Apologize to Iran for the Coup?

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

I will only add to your remarks John by saying (and this generally goes for
all who focus on private charitable contributions as the way things should
be) that whenever anyone gives someone else charity there are always direct
or indirect strings attached and humiliating hoops to jump through.  Those
that are doing the giving always  make the assumption that  receipt of said
charitable help is a privilege and not a right and implicitly make demands
that the receivers genuflect in front of one type of alter or another before
their betters (e.g., those who are making the charity available).   If those
receiving the charity do not give in to this or are not sufficiently
contrite, then they are considered as ungrateful and undeserving wretches.
Those that are doing the giving do not see it as a non-optional moral
obligation and responsibility to the community but rather as a praiseworthy
optional  and personal good deed and sacrifice for which they should be
given special recognition and thanks for doing the right thing.

 

 

 

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:53 AM, LAURIE SOLOMON <LAURIE at advancenet.net>
wrote:

>Courage to accept what? 

Courage to accept pure unqualified version of libertarianism, which is in
many respects akin to anarchism where no state is preferred to a state and a
very limited state, if a state is necessary, is preferred to a robust state.
In short, by implication, a state that is just short of complete
laissez-faire government and society where everyone is for themselves in a
war of all against all and the fittest survives. Instead, you qualify your
libertarianism  with the adjective qualifier "Christian" and let in the back
door state activism in those areas that you value and prefer such as the
protection of private property, the protection of individualism, the
protection of an individual's right to do what they please on their own
property with their own property as long as it is not directly harming
others or interfering with them, the protection of individual member's life
and limb and right to survive, and other such things. 

Precisely.  Whenever I suggest to a libertarian that, if he truly believes
in survival of the fittest without government intervention, then I oughta be
able to just kill him and take his stuff, he always back-pedals about 90
miles an hour and talks about the military and the police as being
legitimate exercises of power by the state.

And that's the thing about libertarians.  About 98% of 'em are white, middle
class or above, have a lot of "stuff", and are very obsessed with their
"stuff".  No matter how they acquired their "stuff", they want to keep it
and get more of it.  Their TV is never big enough; their computers are never
fast enough; they never have enough toys.  They say that they're OK with
helping poor people as long as it's voluntary and not the government
"holding a gun to their head".  But they don't actually KNOW any poor
people, so they feel very safe in saying that.  When they do actually help
someone, it's someone they know personally who is generally just about as
affluent as they are, and it's only after their own needs and wants and
lusts have been thoroughly satisfied first.

However, you stop at supporting government actions that tell people that
they only have a right to private property if they use it for the public
good and collective welfare of the society at large rather than  for their
own individual good and benefit, that make it a crime to accumulate wealth
beyond what one reasonably needs to survive happily at a modest level when
others in society are unable to meet that level of quality of life, or that
says that an individual's rights and freedoms are only valid  if and when
they are exercised in the public good on behalf of the common good. 

Precisely.

 

Thus, you are picking and choosing what areas you desire government to be
active in and what areas you think they have no business in rather than
taking the approach that, since we have no real basis for evaluating what
actions are legitimate actions for government to be involved in, it either
should be involved in nothing (e.g., we in effect have no government) or it
should be proactively  involved in every aspect of collective life with
private individual desires and needs having a lesser priority to the
collective good (e.g., an ant -like society).

 

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