https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2021/09/29/clown-world-fake-news-is-the-only-approved-news-while-real-news-gets-you-banned-on-social-media-n1520610

And when you scroll down you might see the why behind this FBI action.

https://twitter.com/SebGorka/status/1443686769833168905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/476790/

YES!!!!

But for clarification’s sake; you say:

“… Now you rephrase your question as, “Are such people peers, and do you have an obligation to do for them what they will not do, or have no interest in doing, for themselves? ”

If you mean that I simply reworded the question so as not to endlessly repeat myself with the exact wording I have used over the past month, then fair enough.

If however you imply that I am now equivocating or trying to introduce a new shade of meaning, then the answer is , “No, it is not so”.

I have repeatedly and consistently used the term in the same context.: i.e., the context of political and civic equality of both status and responsibility conjoined. This is nothing new, either with me here, or in the realm of political ideas: as my occasional coupling of the term “peer” with jurors, should indicate.

Though of course you may be forgiven for not noticing inasmuch as the other language I used to describe those who are not morally up to their obligations as equals in a system based on reciprocity, obviously unsettles you.

If evidence is needed of my recent use of the term however, click on :https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/09/04/a-post-9-11-political-changer-tells-her-story/

Then use the find function to look up “peer”. If there is significant daylight between my many applications of the term in this and in those comments, it is completely invisible to me.

To me, such a question makes no sense. If I am part of a country that has as one of its most basic founding principles that liberty is part of humankind’s God-given birthright, and I agree with that principle, then my “obligation” (whatever that obligation consists of in terms of action) is to defend the liberty of all.

Well, that’s all very nice and all. But the problem is that 9/10ths of academia, and 50% of the American populace either laugh at the notion of Natural Rights or have some ridiculous, shallow, and misshapen idea of it which they deploy, or ignore, or reject at their rhetorical convenience.

Playing such a game with two sets of rules makes you a sap and allows them to skate as free riders on your morality.

That is why, I went for the more fundamental notion of strong “reciprocity”; which has no particular metaphysical connotations; which people don’t seem interested or capable of defending – as opposed to insisting on – in any case.

But of course as you intuit, or infer, and then allude to, in order to fit into a system of rights based on reciprocity, you have to be fit enough to qualify. And what might add up for the men of the war band, or farmers on the frontier, is likely not to sum up satisfactorily for the mentally ill 26 year old with blue hair and an eating disorder.

But … if you don’t have a Natural Law theory which you can actually explain and defend against criticism, then all you do have left is your ability to pay your dues.

Failing that, it’s all just hot air and emotion …

Your question in its original form was answered here by many people, and I think you just keep posing it because the answer is not one that conforms to the assumptions inherent in your question. That is, many of us don’t think of our fellow citizens as unworthy serfs if they don’t agree with us about liberty and its importance. The concept of whether they “deserve” liberty was inherent in your original question, and – as Robert Frost wrote in a very different context – “I should have called it/Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Now you rephrase your question as, “Are such people peers, and do you have an obligation to do for them what they will not do, or have no interest in doing, for themselves? ” To me, such a question makes no sense. If I am part of a country that has as one of its most basic founding principles that liberty is part of humankind’s God-given birthright, and I agree with that principle, then my “obligation” (whatever that obligation consists of in terms of action) is to defend the liberty of all.

I, however, am no soldier. So if you’re talking about taking up arms, I’m afraid that wouldn’t be my forte. If you’re talking about writing – well, that’s what I do. And I consider it my obligation to stand up for the rights of everyone.

Everyone else can decide his or her own obligation or lack thereof.

But this following assertion required a response that I had forgotten to post til now.
Neo says:
“….I would be highly wary of anyone – and that most definitely includes DNW – who sets him or herself up as the arbiter of who “deserves” freedom or liberty and who does not. Talk about elitism!…”

I think that in dispassionately reading my complete original remarks, it should become clear that when I question whether some people are ” deserving of”, freedom, it is not to challenge the abstract presumption that the principles of negative liberty apply distributively; but rather, given that some individuals not only do not value political liberty, but may even lack it as a primary ” taste” , the question instead is whether or not they deserve the sacrifices of their supposed equals and peers … and by implication either such a status, or the resultant benefit itself.

So the elements conditioning the analysis here of who is ” deserving” , are initially a formally presumed equality of privilege AND responsibility. Next, reciprocity as a non-negotiable condition factor. And then, demonstrable commitment to the project. In this latter instance, one amounting to not much more than being informed and committed to the regime of liberty itself.

I took obvious pains to exclude a so-called natural law entitlement because: 1, most progressives do not believe in it; and 2, because this discussion is about being informed as a civic obligation conditioning one’s being accepted or considered an equal or political peer, and as a result ” deserving”

I am not addressing the question as to whether some people are born serviles, or whether Nature’s God wishes and intends that all men be free.

This is why I repeatedly posed a paradigm question concerning the situation of those who will not defend themselves being alternatively defended by others.

If the question of deserving freedom seems too tangled up in too many strands of law, and metaphysical assumptions, and emotion to answer, the latter question should be clear enough to answer.

Are such people peers, and do you have an obligation to do for them what they will not do, or have no interest in doing, for themselves?

This seems to me to be a rather straightforward question, with direct application to the actual conditions on the ground, and the actual social dynamuc operative in, our present polity.

I am not sure why it is so difficult for some people to face, much less answer.

A moment’s reflection will reveal that the left in this country – the chief peddlers of nonjudgmental inclusivity has already answered a parallel question arising within their own value system with a resounding “No”.

I even have personal information regarding woke medical practioners effectively taunting unvaccinated patients dying of Covid. But, that, is another issue …

“R2L on September 29, 2021 at 11:12 pm said:

richf on September 29, 2021 at 12:17 pm:
Thank you for responding to DNW’s comments on “intrinsic traits across humanity from which moral imperatives may be deduced “.
I concur that that assertion is subject to severe question. For example, Larry Arnhart, in his Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature, lays out 20 “Darwinian natural desires” or traits that might be a foundation for such human morality, with a wide variety of cultural adjustments made based on local conditions and/or what has been historically successful.”

I too appreciated his response, and your comment gives me the opportunity and reminder to say so.

Bear in mind, that when you argue with the negative proposition, you are arguing not with me exactly, but with the default worldview and anthropology held by the progressives generally.

I pointed it out to cut off their dishonest attempt to smuggle natural law into their moral schemata, and to force them to rely either on reciprocity, or to admit as Rorty does that it boils down to a matter of affect and identification and little else. Or take Obama’s “learn to see ourselves in others”, BS as a sample.

No need to cite who at length, as the chief characters are known from Margaret Mead on. And the Rorty and Quine interviews by Magee make explicit reference to such an assumption.

Now, to your point: I myself first noticed a mild recovery of Nat Law type speculation, in about ’99 in an article in Scientific American which revisited the question of universal taboos and in light of new discoveries affirming at least some.

And of course then came along, if not the affirmation of the reality of universal values, then at least the undermining of Mead’s research; and the revelation by Australian [I think both were] anthropologists of a sociopolitical agenda regarding her supposed discoveries, which were falsifications of the real record.

So, what one would have there, as with Arnhart is, I reckon, a kind of potential grounding for what the Romans called the law of nations or the ius gentium. Legal forms and proscriptions revealed by reason, as common to more or less all societies.

This however only takes the advocate part of the way as richf, takes the trouble to admit.

So it seems likely that there are “intrinsic traits across humanity”.

Whether or not we can deduce moral principles from them is of course a different question.

Mortimer Adler is one who famously attempted to do this as part of a popularly aimed work titled, “Ten Philosophical Mistakes”.

Don’t know that story and consequently its provenance. But there’s generally only so much that a Koala can Bear. It’s usually more than the perpetrator at first expects, and so he naturally develops a certain complacency. Aristotle certainly would have had more of a bee in his bonnet about Medes and Medizers than Plutarch.

Anyway Two Cheers for the Tyranny of the One or the Several. They can’t be everywhere; not even today. And nice to be able to bug out to the Great King’s Court if things turn iffy in the Agora. Universalism is the Great Curse.