B. Lafferty said:
"TritonRider" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:From: "B. Lafferty" [email hidden]
Quoted message said:The philosopher king of Plato's Republic was trained to lead a moral life.
In theory, a P-K would not run afoul of the doping problem as he/she would
have no need or desire to dope.
Hey Brian define "moral". Just giving you [censored] because under the sway of
"moral relativism" Sharia treatment of women is equal to feminism.
Not in my worls though.
Bill C
Well, now you're taking us back to Goedel's Theorem and the position that no
formal system can encompass all truth. But the best I've found is that
posited by the late John Rawls of Harvard. He posits a form of political
utilitarianism in which we must all make decisions with a veil of ignorance.
That is, you must make your decision accepting that if tomorrow you were
suddenly the worst off in society, you would be happy with that decision and
willing to live by it.
So, a male muslim could agree to be guided by Sharia if he accepted that
tomorrow he could be a woman. For the politics of the decision, it will do
no god for him to claim that as an impossibility (gender reassignment
notwithstanding).
My apologies to John Rawls for not doing his theory justice.
It is ironic that to do justice to the work of a writer who writes about
justice, that one must discard it.
The following goes very far off the original intent:
Rawls claims to know the purpose of civilization, *as if it has one*. Rawls
presumes it has a designed purpose (social contracts), as religious people
presume that life has a purpose other than itself and that it is *designed* by
some all-knowing being (a deity). Socialism is a religion, and Rawls is often
quoted by socialists. There is no more evidence that civilization was
rationally "designed" (in any meaningful sense of the word) and has a purpose,
than there is that life itself was rationally designed and has a purpose. As
best as the evidence goes, it just happened. To claim one knows how to
rationally assign a "right" purpose, and to know "rightly" how to "adjust the
knobs" of an entity (the whole of civilization) of the most extraordinary
complexity is the height of arrogance. Such is the character of the socialist,
or any investor into religious dogma. As Hayek states, there is a "highly
inadequate intellectual grasp of the processes by which human efforts are
coordinated."
"In other words, Rawls is presenting what he often claims to avoid: a
comprehensive quasi-religious doctrine. It is politically a conservative
doctrine. It has two underlying principles: that stability is good in itself,
and that society should be structured to avoid civil strife, and promote
stability. Ultimately, Rawls says, it may be necessary to enforce such a
doctrine - which he himself does not see as a 'doctrine'. His examples are from
religious belief, but they could apply to any political or social ideal... "
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/rawls.html
=============================================
What is a liberal?
Of course, I do not define "liberalism" as Treanor does. I refer to whom are
called in North America as "liberals," to be plainly socialists. A true liberal
is decently defined here:
http://www.belmont.edu/lockesmith/essay.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Fatal Conceit, hayek
pp 110-111
Terminological Ambiguity and Distinctions among Systems of Coordination
Elsewhere we have tried to disentangle some of the confusions caused
by the ambiguity of terms such as ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ (see
Appendix A), of ‘genetic’ and ‘cultural’ and the like, and as the reader
will have noticed, I generally prefer the less usual but more precise term
‘several property’ to the more common expression ‘private property’.
There are of course many other ambiguities and confusions, some of
them of greater importance.
For instance, there was the deliberate deception practiced by
American socialists in their appropriation of the term ‘liberalism’. As
Joseph A. Schumpeter rightly put it (1954:394): ‘As a supreme if
unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise
have thought it wise to appropriate its label.’ The same applies
increasingly to European political parties of the middle, which either, as
in Britain, carry the name liberal or, as in West Germany, claim to be
liberal but do not hesitate to form coalitions with openly socialist
parties. It has, as I complained over twenty-five years ago (1960,
Postscript), become almost impossible for a Gladstonian liberal to
describe himself as a liberal without giving the impression that he
believes in socialism. Nor is this a new development: as long ago as
1911, L. T. Hobhouse published a book under the title Liberalism that
would more correctly have been called Socialism, promptly followed by a
book entitled The Elements of Social Justice (1922).
Important as is this particular change — one perhaps now beyond
remedying — we must concentrate here, in accordance with the general
theme of this book, on the ambiguities and vagueness caused by the
names generally given to phenomena of human interaction. The
inadequacy of the terms we use to refer to different forms of human
interaction is just one more symptom, one more manifestation, of the
prevailing, highly inadequate intellectual grasp of the processes by
which human efforts are coordinated. These terms are indeed so
inadequate that we can, in using them, not even delimit clearly what we
are talking about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Road to Serfdom, Friedman preface
p xi
INTRODUCTION
2. (Added in 1994.) I use the term liberal, as Hayek does in the book,
and also in his Preface to the 1956 Paperback Edition (p. xxxv below), in
the original nineteenth-century sense of limited government and free mar-
kets, not in the corrupted sense it has acquired in the United States, in
which it means almost the opposite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Road to Serfdom, Hayek PREFACE 1956
pp xxxv-xxxvi
PREFACE 1956
The fact that this book was originally written with only
the British public in mind does not appear to have seriously
affected its intelligibility for the American reader. But there
is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to
forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term
“liberal” in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which
it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it
often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part
of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country,
helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really be-
lieve in liberty, that “liberal” has come to mean the advocacy
of almost every kind of government control. I am still
puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in
liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate
this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted
by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium.
This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the con-
sequent tendency of many true liberals to describe them-
selves as conservatives.
It is true, of course, that in the struggle against the believ-
ers in the all-powerful state the true liberal must sometimes
make common cause with the conservative, and in some cir-
cumstances, as in contemporary Britain, he has hardly any
other way of actively working for his ideals. But true liber-
alism is still distinct from conservatism, and there is danger
in the two being confused. Conservatism, though a neces-
sary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in
its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies
it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with
its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical pro-
pensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusion-
ment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe
that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a
better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is
bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean
on the power of government for the protection of privilege.
The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of
all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and
original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights
to some which are not available on equal terms to others.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Capitalism & Freedom, Friedman
pp 5-6
As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name
of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the
individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported lais-
sez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in
economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individ-
ual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the
nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In -
political matters, it supported the development of representative
government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the Z
arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms
of individuals.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, and especially after
1930 in the United States, the term liberalism came to be associ-
ated with a very different emphasis, particularly in economic
policy. It came to be associated with a readiness to rely primarily
on the state rather than on private voluntary arrangements to
achieve objectives regarded as desirable. The catchwords became
welfare and equality rather than freedom. The nineteenth
century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most
effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth
century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequi
sites of or alternatives to freedom. In the name of welfare and
equality, the twentieth-century liberal has come to favor a re
vival of the very policies of state intervention and paternalism
against which classical liberalism fought. In the very act of
turning the clock back to seventeenth-century mercantilism, he
is fond of castigating true liberals as reactionary!
The change in the meaning attached to the term liberalism is
more striking in economic matters than in political. The twen
tieth-century liberal, like the nineteenth-century liberal, favors
parliamentary institutions, representative government, civil
rights, and so on. Yet even in political matters, there is a notable
difference. Jealous of liberty, and hence fearful of centralized
power, whether in governmental or private hands, the nine-
teenth-century liberal favored political decentralization. Coin-
mitted to action and confident of the beneficence of power so
long as it is in the hands of a government ostensibly controlled
by the electorate, the twentieth-century liberal favors centralized
government. He will resolve any doubt about where power ->
should be located in favor of the state instead of the city, of the 7
federal government instead of the state, and of a world organiza-
tion instead of a national government.
Because of the corruption of the term liberalism, the views
that formerly went under that name are now often labeled con-
servatism. But this is not a satisfactory alternative. The nine _
teenth-century liberal was a radical, both in the etymological
sense of going to the root of the matter, and in the political sense
of favoring major changes in social institutions. So too must be
his modern heir. We do not wish to conserve the state interven-
tions that have interfered so greatly with our freedom, though,
of course, we do wish to conserve those that have promoted it,
Moreover, in practice, the term conservatism has come to cover
so wide a range of views, and views so incompatible with one
another, that we shall no doubt see the growth of hyphenated
designations, such as libertarian-conservative and aristocratic-
conservative.
Partly because of my reluctance to surrender the term to pro-
ponents of measures that would destroy liberty, partly because
I cannot find a better alternative, I shall resolve these difficulties
by using the word liberalism in its original sense — as the doc-
trines pertaining to a free man.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Free to Choose, Friedman
pp 4-6
[Adam] Smith and Jefferson alike had seen concentrated government
power as a great danger to the ordinary man; they saw the pro-
tection of the citizen against the tyranny of government as the per-
petual need. That was the aim of the Virginia Declaration of
Rights (1776) and the United States Bill of Rights (1791); the
purpose of the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution; the
moving force behind the changes in the British legal structure
from the issuance of the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century to
the end of the nineteenth century. To Smith and Jefferson, gov-
ernment’s role was as an umpire, not a participant. Jefferson’s
ideal, as he expressed it in his first inaugural address (1 801), was
“[a] wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from
injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to
regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.”
Ironically, the very success of economic and political freedom
