“Somebody Says:
July 3rd, 2017 at 3:29 pm

It’s illegal to homeschool? Forced labor is the product of liberalism? You lost me there. I guess if you want to define “all bad things” as “liberalism,” then sure. That’s convenient and self-serving and not at all reflective of reality, but ok!

Happy 4th of July, everyone!”

Very pert and perky.

But it has unfortunately become obvious that either you are not a serious man, or you cannot read. Always assuming of course, that there is no deliberate attempt on your part to simply introduce chaos and distraction.

Recall, if you are able, that this exchange began when you stated that:

” Knowing a person’s ideological leaning tells you surprisingly little about that person as a person.”

and I responded that to the contrary.

“Sure it does. It tells you almost everything. It tells you what moral limits the other recognizes as to the placing of interpersonal claims through the agency of government.”

Instead of answering directly on the substance, you attempted to shift footing from what an in-principle no-limits attitude tells about the person having it, to using “taxes” as a paradigm for assessing the concept of limits legitimacy. In other words you wanted to use “taxes” as a general term to counter with a limits concept problem.

“I realize this is a pretty widely accepted position among, well, at least commenters on this site and I presume many conservatives. But I struggle with this:

— There is some level of taxation X that you consider morally acceptable and compatible with liberty.

— There is some level of taxation > X that you consider morally unacceptable and incompatible with liberty. …”

I replied that your new framework for analysis was defective on its own terms

“even on your own terms — taxes — your aim misses the mark.

since

Taxes are not all of one kind insofar as goes either the laying, or the purpose.

Some use taxes are laid to grade the surface of the roads. Some income taxes are laid in order to curtail the behavior of the citizenry.

My comment addressed the notion of predicate justifications, legitimacy, and kinds, not levels.”

and further, employing a reductio …

“Under a no-limits positive liberty scenario as advocated by liberal fascists, there is nothing in principle in the nature of legitimate social relationships to prevent [various extreme] laws …” as admitted by the author of The Frozen Republic.

You then retort,

“Ok. Let me know when they set up the bikes. I’ve put on some pounds around the middle that I need to deal with.

I kid! Because what you’re describing would sound scary if it practically existed in any way in the world, but it doesn’t. It’s a fantasy that you’re busy concocting that doesn’t bear out in any way in reality.”

And then in requesting further qualifications, you inadvertently reveal why you have the limits problem you do.

Because,

“I want to know: roads but not, say, railroads? Maybe roads and railroads but not ports? Roads and railroads and ports but not immunizations? It seems like wherever you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable is arbitrary. It’s an arbitrary distinction between levels of taxation, it’s an arbitrary distinction between which purposes are acceptable and which aren’t, etc.”

In other words, like the run of the mill nominalist, every distinction looks arbitrary to you: i.e., “how do you determine … how do you draw the line?”

I reply,

“Under a progressive anthropology one cannot. As has been freely admitted by numerous modern liberals … or should I say, “social elements”?

There remains only the juggling or jostling of supposed “interests” … i.e., in modern progressive talk, of competing so-called rights. …

In progressive land, everything is arbitrary because there are no rules for interpretation. The taking of private land for private interests is defined in terms of a supposed over all social utility calculus which is understood as the projected flow of taxes into state coffers. The prohibition on a congressional infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, is reinterpreted as the right of state arsenals to store arms for use by national guard, and the (fictional) possession of the right by the individual is then imputed to him as a citizen of the republic. He is then declared as having what he does not have.

You do understand the concept of logical distribution, do you not?”

Well, it is apparent that you do not.

For if you did, and if you were sincerely asking questions rather than subverting the text, so to speak, the discussion of principles of lawfulness, what they say about about the person holding them, and why “policy” and “Law” [as decree] are not all of one species assessed only by degree rather than by kind and legitimacy, then you would not keep giddily pursuing the same bobble-head doll line of “objections” over and over again.

Now, please say something chirpy again.

They have a God given choice apparently, and so do I. Theirs is to devour; and mine is to not be devoured by them under some spurious fellowship pretext.

Are they less liable to cosmic rules, than I am?

Free will is assumed as part of personal responsibility from my pov. Although from atheists like Sam Harris, free will is an illusion. Apparently that also makes his copyright claims to his novels, an illusion, but nobody acts like that is true.

So if the context is DNW’s choice, that is DNW’s business and sanction or loss. But the context is not individual choice, but the choice of the nation, of the Alt Right vs the Ctrl Left, and we are all going to be punished, the innocent along with the guilty. That, I find objectionable, especially when the Alt Right and the Ctrl Left are a bunch of festering ebola carriers calling each other cucks and traitors. If their little lover’s spat only affected them, that would be fine. But when they start drawing me and others like me into their little gig, and pretending I’m on the Ctrl Left or the Alt Right, then I’ll tell them what is really going on in this NASA “sphere” of a planet. Their delusions aren’t going to stop me. The worst they can do is kill the body, as others here have referenced. And I doubt even that is true unless they get more than 100 of their soros funded computer troll rats against me, plus the State SWAT teams. (the city SWAT teams are kind of incompetent, except for those trained before 2001, probably more dangerous as a result)

Are they less liable to cosmic rules, than I am?

That depends on what the lawsuit rules are in the divine courts. Divine laws are not human laws. When Lucifer tells them to do things in a way that has the evidence on their side, and trapping you with loopholes, he can win a case against you that otherwise he wouldn’t have. Because he let you, via your own free will, perjure yourself or contradict yourself, and then the divine counsel has to judge you for it. Or else be broken of their own laws and contracts.

Lucifer’s Own is using the rules and Word of Jehovah, against the allies of Jehovah. Alinsky, a reminder. It was not the human that created the loopholes, and gave it to a entity called Lucifer. Vice a versa.

When did the notion of secular self-government fall to a replacement in the form of a Christian-tinged masochism drama?

Christianity has always been the underdog, before it became State Christianity. “Muscular Christianity” is what people like to hear, but that is a corrupted form of 1st century discipleship under the Messiah. The Jewish messiah, not the Kenyan Hussein American boy.

Well you can throw yourself on the rails if you want.

Westerners like you profess the surface of Christianity, but you don’t actually believe in it as originally written in the Gospels of Mark, Luke, etc: a shell of its former self. Same cyclical historical problem that lead to the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Pharisees vs Sadducees, Jews vs Romans, Gentiles vs Elect, Rome vs barbarians.

But the issue here is the predicate of our continuing political affiliation and the presumption of moral fellowship with people who are clearly out to use the system to destroy and take over.

Remember Exodus? The enemies are to be killed, including the giant tribes of men, women, and children. It was not written in the scriptures “adopt the Egyptian gods, ways, and culture to beat them at their own game”. It was to kill them and separate yourself from them. Preferably the latter first, but the former will do too. That’s it. Maybe this got more complicated later on, but the original solution is still original.

You don’t have to become a cheat yourself, to throw the cards back in their faces.

As if you can quit the game now that you joined Lucifer’s table. You’d have to draw and shoot the dealer first, Then you can throw the cards in their face and leave. Have people forgotten which angels are ruling this earth now… it isn’t the Divine Counsel.

has finally revealed to conservatives that there was something lacking, something rather shallow, in their grasp of their own principles.

It’s natural that Christianity being a shell of its former self, would be revealed for the white washed tomb hypocrisy that it has become. If the Left didn’t do it, somebody would have by now.

Trump fights. He out Alinskys the Alinskites and either they can’t seem to understand it or, like a moth to a flame, they are simply unable to ignore it.– T

Gonna need more than tweet words and punching back 100x as hard, to defeat Lucifer. You’ll love it up until the time Jeremiah’s prophecies come true.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Somebody Says:
July 3rd, 2017 at 12:51 pm

“Under a no-limits positive liberty scenario as advocated by liberal fascists, there is nothing in principle in the nature of legitimate social relationships to prevent laws instituting corvee, or making it illegal to educate your children, or stating that in the interests of social progress you shall be positively commanded to mate with this person or that, or “donate” blood, or sit at a bicycle 4 hours a day to generate electricity for fans to cool the bureaucracy.”

Ok. Let me know when they set up the bikes. I’ve put on some pounds around the middle that I need to deal with.

I kid! Because what you’re describing would sound scary if it practically existed in any way in the world, but it doesn’t. It’s a fantasy that you’re busy concocting that doesn’t bear out in any way in reality.

Nightmare, not fantasy. That would be the nightmarish logical implications of a progressive view of law and its limits.

But while you scoff at the amusing reductio which implies that you might in-principle be set to peddling power to the powerful, you cannot very well scoff at the example of schooling laws, or corvee, which have been seen on this continent, and even in this nation. Nor for that matter, can you shrug off the notion of government directed mating policies which have definitely appeared in various polities, and which has been discussed and mooted as an in-principle potential progressive social engineering tool in American law journals. This, in terms of: “If progressive X premise is accepted, then why not Y implication?”

“And you’re still not addressing my fundamental question, which is: how do you determine a) the acceptable non-zero level of government intrusion that is compatible with liberty, and b) how do you draw the line between that acceptable level of government intrusion and an unacceptable level of government intrusion?”

I answered your question. Under a progressive anthropology one cannot. As has been freely admitted by numerous modern liberals … or should I say, “social elements”?

There remains only the juggling or jostling of supposed “interests” … i.e., in modern progressive talk, of competing so-called rights.

Thus: A scenario under which positive liberties which logically entail the sociopolitical “right” to be provided for, or given X by others, are ostensibly weighed against what is clearly a more primordial negative liberty, which logically implies the right to be unmolested by the self-interested demands of another.

The justification of an imposition or cost upon any given member of the political class, which was formerly based on an indifferent and distributive possession of a government good or benefit, is by sleight of hand now politically redefined by progressives in utilitarian terms, and the possession of the good is held to be vicarious.

Why that absurd system is one that should be assumed as tolerable much less as optimum, is never made clear.

“For example: you posit that taxes used for grading roads are compatible with liberty. “

I did not posit that. I described how a user tax (for example a gasoline tax) for the maintenance of the surface of a road, or you could throw in municipal water bills in many cases, differed in principle from taxation as a social management tool in the kit of a bureaucratic social engineering class.

“I want to know: roads but not, say, railroads? Maybe roads and railroads but not ports? Roads and railroads and ports but not immunizations?

The difference between your body and my body, between your bearing the costs of your own body and me bearing the costs of mine are hardly arbitrary.

Either of us can walk along any public highway at will, dock in any public port, in principle.

Railroads were given public lands as incentives, and a century of muddled and bad law ensued.

What you mean to demonstrate with the free floating term “immunizations” I can’t imagine, unless you are talking about the herd effect of government funded immunizations against say, air born contagions, which might well be seen as a legitimate public health issue which in principle affects everyone indifferently. As opposed say to free Gardasil, or HIV vaccines.

It seems like wherever you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable is arbitrary. It’s an arbitrary distinction between levels of taxation, it’s an arbitrary distinction between which purposes are acceptable and which aren’t, etc.”

The constitutional distinction was always clear until the term “the general welfare” was re-interpreted from bearing a logically distributive sense, to a utilitarian sense.

Didn’t you get that?

“(As an aside, Obama’s proposed top marginal tax rate was a third lower than it was under Reagan; it would seem that under the two Democratic and now three Republican presidencies since then, things have been getting consistently less tyrannical.)

And to look at it from the other side, both Democratic and Republican presidents and Congresses have kept this system in place. If you want to take the principled stance that the income tax is illegitimate and anyone who supports it is a tyrant or a fascist or whatever, that’s legit. But if you want to argue that only one side is responsible for a system that both have sustained, that also seems…pretty arbitrary.”

In progressive land, everything is arbitrary because there are no rules for interpretation. The taking of private land for private interests is defined in terms of a supposed over all social utility calculus which is understood as the projected flow of taxes into state coffers. The prohibition on a congressional infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, is reinterpreted as the right of state arsenals to store arms for use by national guard, and the (fictional) possession of the right by the individual is then imputed to him as a citizen of the republic. He is then declared as having what he does not have.

You do understand the concept of logical distribution, do you not?

Ok. Let me know when they set up the bikes. I’ve put on some pounds around the middle that I need to deal with.

I kid! Because what you’re describing would sound scary if it practically existed in any way in the world, but it doesn’t. It’s a fantasy that you’re busy concocting that doesn’t bear out in any way in reality.

And you’re still not addressing my fundamental question, which is: how do you determine a) the acceptable non-zero level of government intrusion that is compatible with liberty, and b) how do you draw the line between that acceptable level of government intrusion and an unacceptable level of government intrusion?

For example: you posit that taxes used for grading roads are compatible with liberty. I want to know: roads but not, say, railroads? Maybe roads and railroads but not ports? Roads and railroads and ports but not immunizations? It seems like wherever you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable is arbitrary. It’s an arbitrary distinction between levels of taxation, it’s an arbitrary distinction between which purposes are acceptable and which aren’t, etc.

(As an aside, Obama’s proposed top marginal tax rate was a third lower than it was under Reagan; it would seem that under the two Democratic and now three Republican presidencies since then, things have been getting consistently less tyrannical.)

And to look at it from the other side, both Democratic and Republican presidents and Congresses have kept this system in place. If you want to take the principled stance that the income tax is illegitimate and anyone who supports it is a tyrant or a fascist or whatever, that’s legit. But if you want to argue that only one side is responsible for a system that both have sustained, that also seems…pretty arbitrary.

Somebody Says:
July 3rd, 2017 at 11:23 am

“A doctrine that says there are in principle no absolute moral limits to what a liberal may claim that [for example] I owe it, just because … it is.”

I realize this is a pretty widely accepted position among, well, at least commenters on this site and I presume many conservatives. But I struggle with this:

— There is some level of taxation X that you consider morally acceptable and compatible with liberty.

— There is some level of taxation > X that you consider morally unacceptable and incompatible with liberty. “

You say you are using taxation as a handy stand in for what you call an array of phenomena. But even on your own terms – taxes – your aim misses the mark.

Taxes are not all of one kind insofar as goes either the laying, or the purpose.

Some use taxes are laid to grade the surface of the roads. Some income taxes are laid in order to curtail the behavior of the citizenry.

My comment addressed the notion of predicate justifications, legitimacy, and kinds, not levels.

The ‘in principle no-limits” doctrine which has been admitted to by liberal authors such as the author of “The Frozen Republic”
and to me by personally by some number of self-professed liberals, has as much to to with the species and kinds of allowable claims as it does their intensity.

As the man said to the socialite when she admitted she would in fact sleep with him if the reward were great enough, “We have already defined what you are; now we are just negotiating price”.

The income tax itself is an example of the kind of contortions which our legislators had to go through in order to make it seem constitutional. It is justified as a kind of excise on excess income, not as an in-effect capitation tax, which it is.

Under a no-limits positive liberty scenario as advocated by liberal fascists, there is nothing in principle in the nature of legitimate social relationships to prevent laws instituting corvee, or making it illegal to educate your children, or stating that in the interests of social progress you shall be positively commanded to mate with this person or that, or “donate” blood, or sit at a bicycle 4 hours a day to generate electricity for fans to cool the bureaucracy.

That is to say once again, modern liberals having abandoned any notion of natural rights as derived from teleological considerations, find that there are no social management moves which in principle automatically morally delegitimize the sociopolitical arrangement through the intrusion of overweening claims.

This intellectual stance of course dis-inhibits the progressive, and makes not only the intensity of the “authorized” claims a matter virtually pure fiat based on “taste”, but also the species, kinds, and domains into which they intrude.

“Society” is of course and for strategic reasons rhetorically spoken of as some kind of reified entity, with an existence and a sovereignty of its own.

That is pure nonsense. But peddling the notion serves to disguise the real nature of the interpersonal clams made by liberals against others inhabiting the same polity; as it re-frames the transfers in vague terms of some “common” if demonstrably non-distributive, “good”.

And of course, you can never do too much good or go too far in bringing it about.