4/11/2008 3:37:12 AM

I've chewed my way through half of that essay, and ^ is a fair summation of my retorts so far. But, saying that, both social agitators logged serious time as wanted criminals of fairly enlightened civilizations (Britain and Rome). All governments are collective regimes after all.

But, I don't think I've got the time to devote to a full deconstruction of this thing. What I've read has a lot of problems with it. I'll come back for the glaring errors. Most have to do with free market concepts, though.

[Edited on April 11, 2008 at 4:00 AM. Reason : treason is a pretty high crime]

4/11/2008 3:50:00 AM

Its all you need to know. Who are you to argue against the man who DIED for your right to free will, and the man who ARTICULATED your INALIENABLE rights.


America

4/11/2008 3:51:32 AM

Ok.

1)

Quote :

"This was a very dangerous package to offer citizens of a new country. With no real template to work from, they were taking a gamble hoping that newly free people would contribute to society rather than pursuing their own health and well-being."

No real template to work from? The founding fathers were almost all scholars of history, and they had a fairly large template to work from. Rome. They also had the benefit of hind sight to see where Rome failed and what was needed to prevent that. By asserting that they had no basis for their ideas in the first place, you're already arguing from a flawed position.

2) On slavery, that institution long predates the founding of america. To suggest that it was implemented in our country to maintain societal order (in the manner that you describe) would be equal to me asserting that when you have you own little authoritarian kingdom, that you allowed cable TV to exist to ensure the success of your country.

3) On children, it is only in the last century really where societies have decided that children should not work, but no society has ever conferred all the rights of society onto its children. But children have always worked throughout history, that is the whole purpose of this thing we call summer break.

4) On men and women, this whole notion that until recently women never worked is completely absurd. Women worked quite a bit in history past, and it was for only a brief period where women did not work. Now, up until the fall of the agricultural society and the advent of the industrial society, men and women worked at the same job, that of protecting, and ensuring the survival of the family. The specific job at any given time might have been different, but to say that women didn't work is absurd. As society became more industrial, the tasks to provide for the family shifted, but women still worked. The only thing that has changed is not so much that women have the right to work, so much as we as a society no longer see the need for a parent who's job is caring for the house. But whether that parent is a woman or a man has little bearing on society as a whole.

5) The decline of the standard household has little to do with women having the option to work and more to do with the belief that freedom means you can live however you want without regards to the reality of your situation. It is more than possible for a family to survive on the income of one parent, but that family needs to make decisions. Way back when (in the Good Ol Days™) you raised a multi child household in a 2 or maybe if you were lucky 3 bedroom house. And these were families of 4 or 5 children. These days, everyone wants a separate room for each of the kids, a study, a living rooms, a dining room, a kitchen, 3 baths, or 3 stories, a cellar, a 3 car garage, a sun room and a family room. That households find themselves without someone to care for the children has more to do with living beyond one's means than any "individual freedoms".

6) The right to privacy. Very little historically has been known by the governments what any one individual is doing. The way society has accomplished it's monitoring of citizens productiveness has been with small close knit communities. It wasn't that people didn't have a right to privacy, no society has ever made it so that society has a right to bug your house.

5) Freedom of speech. The founding fathers did not think that any government could be trusted to serve the people for long. That inevitably the government would seek power for its own ends rather than the people of society. The founding fathers understood that without freedom of speech it would be difficult for society to protect itself from the whims of a self serving government.

6) The right to bear arms was about individuals. The militia was called forth from members of society who brought their own weapons. I won't go into this further as it's been plenty discussed before.

7) The abridgment of the founding documents and the supreme laws of this country by way of presidential or congressional fiat is by no means something that should be celebrated. The destruction of society by the "collective" is no better than destruction by individuals.

8) The socialization of healthcare is another destructive force on society. Remember that whoever is running the collective is ultimately benefitting as an individual at the expense of society.

9) Elimination of individuals. Who decides?

Finally, if individuals harming society for their own personal benefit should be eliminated, when do we start killing the politicians? And you. If we examine your point from a distance, you suggest that what society wants is what society gets, and those working against that need to be eliminated. Clearly society wants individual freedoms right now. Your active work against that is harmful to society. When do you submit your head to the guillotine?

All in all, it's clear you have no real understanding of human and specifically political history before the 1900's, nor have you paid much attention to the history of the last century when many of your ideals have been tried.

4/11/2008 8:35:16 AM

I'm wondering where your evidence for some of the assumptions in this essay come from... If you please:

#1

Quote :

"they were taking a gamble hoping that newly free people would contribute to society rather than pursuing their own health and well-being"

Do you have some kind of historical evidence of this? All the founding fathers' writings seem to indicate pretty clearly that they saw the individual's pursuit of their own health and well being to be the purpose of government itself. In fact, they called life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness self-evident truths.

#2
You assert in the third paragraph that slavery was instituted, in the US, to ensure a permanent labor class and as well as make sure "important work was not left undone." Slavery in the US began in the early 1600s, so it was a preexisting condition to this whole forming of the nation thing. I'd also like to see evidence of this so-called "enlightened slave".

#3

Quote :

"Food and clothing prices have climbed, and real wages have declined as women and minorities have entered the environment of paid labor."

I suppose on a historical time-line you might be able to show (at best) a correlation of the two, but I think you'll be very hard pressed to give real evidence showing causality here.

#4
You call the rights to privacy and free speech not just absurd, but you state that "privacy for individuals never promotes the collective interest." Really? Again, any sort of evidence or example to back that one up?

I've got more, but I'd like to keep this manageable. There seems to be a common trend in each of your arguments that the individual's rights / desires always are at odds with society's or "the collective's" goals.

I put forth the argument that nothing could be farther from the truth. Of course there are exceptions, individuals hell-bent on doing harm to others to achieve their own goals, but by and large the upholding of an individual's right to self-determination is precisely what has kept this nation going for 200+ years.


[Edited on April 11, 2008 at 9:43 AM. Reason : .]

4/11/2008 9:40:52 AM

I didn't read the *words*, but im gonna go ahead and assume, based on the overwhelming negative responses, that its pretty stupid.

4/11/2008 10:02:48 AM

"The goal of a well run company may be to make profits for its shareholders, but merely in doing that -- provided it faces competition in its markets, behaves honestly and obeys the law -- the company, without even trying, is doing good works. Its employees willingly work for the company in exchange for wages; the transaction makes them better off. Its customers willingly pay for the company's products; the transaction makes them better off."

"The Standard of living people in the West enjoy today is due to little else but the selfish pursuit of profit. It is a point that Adam Smith emphasised in 'The Wealth of Nations': 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The Good Company. (2005). Economist 374 (8410).


I think this may address some of the economic rights you condemned and how selfishness can work for the greater good.

4/11/2008 10:21:34 AM

I'm going to assume that this "essay" was a time consuming troll that should be moved to chit chat.

4/11/2008 11:18:52 AM

^ dead on


bring her home to chit chat so I can give it the lovin it needs

4/11/2008 11:25:04 AM

You need some facts backing up statements like this if you want to strengthen your argument:

"an individual will rarely choose on his own to help society"

4/11/2008 11:26:59 AM

i hate pseudo-intellectuals.


I stopped after paragraph 2. When this NoClues asserts that the founders got it wrong and didn't entirely think through the system they created.


Hey insane nut job, in the 10,000 years of human history, we are the richest and most prosperous the world has ever known. Indeed, our poorest would rank among some of the richest in other countries. What the founders did was deviate from the tyrannical scourge that scorched the earth since its inception.

4/11/2008 11:35:59 AM

Wow. I couldn't disagree more with the essay.

While there's a lot criticize about American individualism, this isn't right angle of attack. We need focus on the good of the many, yes, but this should come from freely from people.

I reject the idea that folks rarely choose to help society. Cooperation is ancient and natural. Hierarchies and price systems hinder and subvert the drive to work together.

4/11/2008 12:21:09 PM

Quote :

"The most enlightened slaves understood that serving the interest of society as a whole was more important than their own personal independence"

Quote :

"In recent years, many of these important bulwarks against wholesale individualism have been abandoned. Society as a whole is suffering thanks to this long-standing and ever-increasing notion that human beings have individual rights. Blacks and women fought long battles to assert individual rights for themselves, and the results for society have been disastrous."

Quote :

"Thankfully, there are new limitations being imposed on individual rights which might help to stop the harm being done to society in the name of individual rights. "

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

The problem with LiusClues is that he assumes he would be an exception to his grand idea, and not be sold off into slavery.

4/11/2008 1:07:07 PM

4/11/2008 2:00:31 PM

Communism is unamerican

4/11/2008 2:01:45 PM

Dear Michael Freenor

Please stop trolling The Soap Box as you're god damn terrible at it.

Not only do most of you posts just reek of obvious troll (even though users like TreeTwista are too downs to notice)

But they also suffer from being painfully not funny and uninteresting.

Furthermore,

Take care not to repost SomethingAwful.com LF material as your own as that again defeats the purpose of original trolling.


Dear TSB:

Stop biting on every fucking non conservative viewpoint as original and attempting to debate it. You're in college. You should posses *SOME* reasoning ability which would lead me to assume you can differentiate between getting skullfucked and having a legitimate argument.

4/11/2008 2:56:58 PM

I think Santa wins the thread.

4/11/2008 3:00:00 PM

[Edited on April 12, 2008 at 2:35 AM. Reason : ]

4/12/2008 2:34:58 AM

Quote :

"Dear Michael Freenor Please stop trolling The Soap Box as you're god damn terrible at it. Not only do most of you posts just reek of obvious troll (even though users like TreeTwista are too downs to notice) But they also suffer from being painfully not funny and uninteresting. Furthermore, Take care not to repost SomethingAwful.com LF material as your own as that again defeats the purpose of original trolling. "

wat, I know he lurks occasionally, but he quit posting a while ago.

4/12/2008 7:07:18 AM

Unless Mike is using Abe's login these days... which is possible, considering the amount of political posts juxtaposed with the lack of running posts...

4/12/2008 10:10:27 AM

4/12/2008 1:00:22 PM