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If authoritarianism will solve this country's problems, will you support it?

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Posts

  • YarYar Registered User regular
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    I think the basic free-market-esque response here is: if you truly believed in the rightness of freedom of speech, and self-government, and other foundations of Democracy, then you'd rest assured knowing that any business that excludes potential employees over things like this is doomed to fail to compete with businesses that don't.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Yar wrote:
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    I think the basic free-market-esque response here is: if you truly believed in the rightness of freedom of speech, and self-government, and other foundations of Democracy, then you'd rest assured knowing that any business that excludes potential employees over things like this is doomed to fail to compete with businesses that don't.

    The response to which is to hand the person saying that a history book.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    edited November 2011
    The argument that the free market will regulate itself (let's call it the Paul Doctrine) is historically bullshit. If it hadn't been for things like the FDA and other laws and agencies that applied regulation to industry it would not have self corrected because you make more money by cutting corners.

    Actually, it could possible be interpreted as an action of the invisible hand that the government enacts regulation due to public pressure... it's almost like choices aren't always either/or.

    AManFromEarth on
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  • JarsJars Registered User regular
    wasn't locke saying an enlightened monarch would be the best form of governance?

    I mean compared to this crock it wouldn't be all that bad

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Jars wrote:
    wasn't locke saying an enlightened monarch would be the best form of governance?

    I mean compared to this crock it wouldn't be all that bad

    I think that's true.

    The problem, of course, is guaranteeing that the monarch is enlightened. For every Elizabeth II there's a thousand James IIs.

    AManFromEarth on
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  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Jars wrote:
    wasn't locke saying an enlightened monarch would be the best form of governance?

    I mean compared to this crock it wouldn't be all that bad

    Voltaire thought so too. A lot of the Enlightenment philosophers had a poor view of democracy, much of which was based on a mixture of fear of the lower classes and knowledge of the clusterfuck that democracy turned into in Ancient Greece when the elected leaders figured out the best way to keep winning was to go wage war after war.

    Phillishere on
  • ArtoriaArtoria Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    Oddly enough this very thing happened to me at a job I had about 4 years ago. I gave a ride to some of my fellow employees to a company lunch. Everything was all normal and we were all chatting and when I started the car Rush was on my radio as I always listen to news/talk in the car. The car fell silent and I changed the radio pretty quick. Later that afternoon I had to go to one of the supervisor's office and they had a bumper sticker on their wall from Moveon.org saying "fire the republicans". I was let go at the end of the week. I never had any problems at work, I was well liked and respected, never messed up at all so when I asked why I was told "we are going in a different direction". I was the IT guy I'm not sure what direction you go where you don't need the IT guy.

    At the end of it all I wound up a lot better off but still this does happen. Not just to people on the right but on the left as well and it shouldn't. It's sad really. I've worked with a lot of people I might disagree with politically but I wouldn't even think on calling on anyone else for help.

    Artoria on
  • JepheryJephery Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Jars wrote:
    wasn't locke saying an enlightened monarch would be the best form of governance?

    I mean compared to this crock it wouldn't be all that bad

    Yes, in a sense, but Locke he qualified it by saying that the Monarchy/Oligarchy must rule by the consent of the people, and he believed in the separation of powers, as well as the right of the people to rebel against the government in the event it no longer has their consent.

    Representative government happens to be one of the ways to achieve this combination of ideas.

    The US is pretty much ruled by an oligarchy of rich people, but they rule only with our consent and aren't all in it together.

    Jephery on
    }
    "Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
  • dojangodojango Registered User regular
    Jephery wrote:
    Jars wrote:
    wasn't locke saying an enlightened monarch would be the best form of governance?

    I mean compared to this crock it wouldn't be all that bad

    Yes, in a sense, but Locke he qualified it by saying that the Monarchy/Oligarchy must rule by the consent of the people, and he believed in the separation of powers, as well as the right of the people to rebel against the government in the event it no longer has their consent.

    Representative government happens to be one of the ways to achieve this combination of ideas.

    The US is pretty much ruled by an oligarchy of rich people, but they rule only with our consent and aren't all in it together.

    Also, he was big on "inalienable rights", like life, liberty and property. Property being the biggest, if I recall.
    And he had a major hand in the English Bill of Rights, if I remember correctly.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    dragonsama wrote:
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    Oddly enough this very thing happened to me at a job I had about 4 years ago. I gave a ride to some of my fellow employees to a company lunch. Everything was all normal and we were all chatting and when I started the car Rush was on my radio as I always listen to news/talk in the car. The car fell silent and I changed the radio pretty quick. Later that afternoon I had to go to one of the supervisor's office and they had a bumper sticker on their wall from Moveon.org saying "fire the republicans". I was let go at the end of the week. I never had any problems at work, I was well liked and respected, never messed up at all so when I asked why I was told "we are going in a different direction". I was the IT guy I'm not sure what direction you go where you don't need the IT guy.

    At the end of it all I wound up a lot better off but still this does happen. Not just to people on the right but on the left as well and it shouldn't. It's sad really. I've worked with a lot of people I might disagree with politically but I wouldn't even think on calling on anyone else for help.
    I never would have thought of that. All I know is that whenever I give a co-worker or a boss a ride for lunch, my radio is playing metal.

  • Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    dragonsama wrote:
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    Oddly enough this very thing happened to me at a job I had about 4 years ago. I gave a ride to some of my fellow employees to a company lunch. Everything was all normal and we were all chatting and when I started the car Rush was on my radio as I always listen to news/talk in the car. The car fell silent and I changed the radio pretty quick. Later that afternoon I had to go to one of the supervisor's office and they had a bumper sticker on their wall from Moveon.org saying "fire the republicans". I was let go at the end of the week. I never had any problems at work, I was well liked and respected, never messed up at all so when I asked why I was told "we are going in a different direction". I was the IT guy I'm not sure what direction you go where you don't need the IT guy.

    At the end of it all I wound up a lot better off but still this does happen. Not just to people on the right but on the left as well and it shouldn't. It's sad really. I've worked with a lot of people I might disagree with politically but I wouldn't even think on calling on anyone else for help.

    See, this is exactly the kind of thing we are talking about. Its not just the hippy liberals that get screwed over on account of this, conservatives do to and its still wrong.

    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
  • Fallout2manFallout2man Vault Dweller Registered User regular
    edited November 2011
    Yar wrote:
    I think the basic free-market-esque response here is: if you truly believed in the rightness of freedom of speech, and self-government, and other foundations of Democracy, then you'd rest assured knowing that any business that excludes potential employees over things like this is doomed to fail to compete with businesses that don't.

    Which is true in a system of which there are no monopolies possible. The bigger problem is monopolies can come from natural results of success or through government fiat but their end result is the same, you grow to such an effective size and your wealth becomes so large that in effect it makes you much richer to ignore your community and your customers instead of serving them (destroying the primary benefit of the profit motive in business.) This then allows the owner, whether in personal or corporate form, to begin pursuing policies that increase only their income/wealth and are not required to have the best interests of the workers, customers, or the community at heart.

    Once this happens the monopoly can only be effectively broken via force. Either the federal government in a Democratic society, private armies in Libertopia, or just straight up angry mobs in anarchy. Of course again this also overlooks the possibility to effectively corner the market on legitimate use of force, which nation states of today have legitimately done in such a way as to eliminate the practicality of any approach other than nonviolent Democratic reforms.

    What does this mean, bottom line? Whenever the size of an entity, be it a business, a government or a person through institutions they may directly or indirectly be able to exert control over (likely via money) reaches an unequal size and realizes their own ability to use this unequal size to their unique advantage, they can, and will, and they will care not for whom they might hurt. Thus there is always a compelling interest to ensure in some form that this cannot and does not happen to the detriment of everyone in a given society.

    Fallout2man on
    On Ignorance:
    Kana wrote:
    If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"

    Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    dragonsama wrote:
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    Oddly enough this very thing happened to me at a job I had about 4 years ago. I gave a ride to some of my fellow employees to a company lunch. Everything was all normal and we were all chatting and when I started the car Rush was on my radio as I always listen to news/talk in the car. The car fell silent and I changed the radio pretty quick. Later that afternoon I had to go to one of the supervisor's office and they had a bumper sticker on their wall from Moveon.org saying "fire the republicans". I was let go at the end of the week. I never had any problems at work, I was well liked and respected, never messed up at all so when I asked why I was told "we are going in a different direction". I was the IT guy I'm not sure what direction you go where you don't need the IT guy.

    At the end of it all I wound up a lot better off but still this does happen. Not just to people on the right but on the left as well and it shouldn't. It's sad really. I've worked with a lot of people I might disagree with politically but I wouldn't even think on calling on anyone else for help.

    That is extremely fucked up.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    dragonsama wrote:
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    Oddly enough this very thing happened to me at a job I had about 4 years ago. I gave a ride to some of my fellow employees to a company lunch. Everything was all normal and we were all chatting and when I started the car Rush was on my radio as I always listen to news/talk in the car. The car fell silent and I changed the radio pretty quick. Later that afternoon I had to go to one of the supervisor's office and they had a bumper sticker on their wall from Moveon.org saying "fire the republicans". I was let go at the end of the week. I never had any problems at work, I was well liked and respected, never messed up at all so when I asked why I was told "we are going in a different direction". I was the IT guy I'm not sure what direction you go where you don't need the IT guy.

    At the end of it all I wound up a lot better off but still this does happen. Not just to people on the right but on the left as well and it shouldn't. It's sad really. I've worked with a lot of people I might disagree with politically but I wouldn't even think on calling on anyone else for help.

    You should have whipped out that dildo and gimp mask you keep in the glove compartment and distracted them with your deviant sexual habits enough that they forgot about the radio.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    moniker wrote:
    dragonsama wrote:
    moniker wrote:
    How does that stand in disagreement with anything from the last few pages of this tangent? No one is suggesting that you should be prevented from firing an employee for moonlighting at a competing firm. However, being empowered to fire someone solely for being a Democrat/Republican unduly impacts the very foundations of our democracy. Your capacity to earn a living should not be dependent on subverting your capacity for self government.

    Oddly enough this very thing happened to me at a job I had about 4 years ago. I gave a ride to some of my fellow employees to a company lunch. Everything was all normal and we were all chatting and when I started the car Rush was on my radio as I always listen to news/talk in the car. The car fell silent and I changed the radio pretty quick. Later that afternoon I had to go to one of the supervisor's office and they had a bumper sticker on their wall from Moveon.org saying "fire the republicans". I was let go at the end of the week. I never had any problems at work, I was well liked and respected, never messed up at all so when I asked why I was told "we are going in a different direction". I was the IT guy I'm not sure what direction you go where you don't need the IT guy.

    At the end of it all I wound up a lot better off but still this does happen. Not just to people on the right but on the left as well and it shouldn't. It's sad really. I've worked with a lot of people I might disagree with politically but I wouldn't even think on calling on anyone else for help.

    That is extremely fucked up.

    Agreed. That shit shouldn't happen in a democracy.

  • PantsBPantsB Fake Thomas Jefferson Registered User regular
    If the government became authoritarian the biggest problem the country would face is that its government was authoritarian. So.. no.

    Lock the thread yo

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    QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
  • The EnderThe Ender Registered User regular
    Fear of socialist/communist revolution/insurrection/etc goes all the way back to .. well to the start of socialism. "It happened over there, it could happen here!" and all that. There was very much an effort at crushing such things.

    That's just referring to the first one btw, but while the wiki (and some other sources) like to divide them up into 2 distinct periods (neither of which includes Nixon's presidency fyi), it's not like the sentiment disappeared or something after the early 20s. Fear of the encroachment of what was seen as an unAmerican way of governing/thinking/society/etc was a huge force within the US for most of the 20th century and still is to some extent (note the power still inherent in labeling something as "socialism" within the political sphere).

    You really sound like you just read some book about Kissinger and suddenly everything is about him and his viewpoint or something and it's kinda silly. There was genuine fear of socialist/communist influence. Both domestically and abroad. And no, it wasn't a consistent policy, but that's the point. It wasn't some cover for some other motivation alot of the time.

    Yes, most sources divide them into 2 distinct periods, and the 'Red Scare' faded after McCarthyism (as I'd said) once the Kennedy administration was in power.

    You might ask, if you were a curious person, "Gee whiz, what happened around 1920? Why do most historians divide the period like that?"

    The answer is that the October Revolution that had taken place in 1917 was now starting to unify Russia, with the civil war ending favorably for the Red Army and the White Army largely running with it's tail tucked between it's legs. The writings of people like Trotsky and Luxemberg were starting to become influential, and politicians in the west started to sway in the breeze a little bit. Socialism was becoming more popular, and they didn't want to be on the losing side of that geopolitical battle.

    The Catholic right bared it's fangs in response, of course, and we would later see the ultimate fruits of that in Germany and in Italy, and by the 1940s the idea of communism had been so perverted by Stalin & Mao that is was safe to vomit all over it again.

    By the time McCarthy was finally ejected for his hilariously inconvenient fascist outbursts, the Red Scare essentially mutated into an axiomatic framework, where people like Kennedy didn't even have to bother with the propaganda anymore. Then the American public hears that the USSR and China are planning to overrun Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailland, after their lovely playboy President had been shot by a communist, and - for the most part - they happily agreed to take up Johnson's call to action.

    Then, in 1968, a the story emerged of a village called 'My Lai' being butchered and burned to the ground by American servicemen. This dramatically altered American opinion about the war in Vietnam, prompted the eventual resignation of Johnson, and had the right wing adopt the principle we're all now familiar with: no cost or misery too great in the name freedom.

    The Republicans wouldn't have won with the Nixon ticket (his polling was only marginally better than Rockerfeller's, which was horrendous), except that Robert Kennedy was killed during his campaign, leaving only Humphrey, who was even uglier and less charasmatic than Nixon, and didn't capture Kennedy's voters. This is where Kissinger becomes an essential pillar of American history, and of the western dialogue about communism; all the way from the Paris peace talks he sabotaged to the way he captured the interest of the emerging American television networks, he solidified - with malicious intent - an outlook of violent nationalism, laissez faire dogma and the overhwleming communist menace. It was only after the repeated lies & twisted speculations of Kissinger on national TV that the idea of Russian BMPs and T-72s thundering through the Fulda Gap and conquering Europe entered the American imagination, and it was this implied threat that really enabled so much of the abhorrent CIA actions from the 70s through the 80s.

    With Love and Courage
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