| Author
|
Post |
 
|
|
Dan Moilanen
F L I N T O I D
|
I think an entirely new thread should be devoted to the article that Adam linked in one of the other threads. I really want to respond to it and how inaccurate the actual article is. I might even reference some other articles or classical texts by Plato, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and many other classical political philosophers that have more legitimacy than Mr. Ken D. Berry.
Here's the original link:
http://www.nolanchart.com/article5475.html
I'll format this response by quoting passages from the article and simply responding to it paragraphs at a time.
quote:
An outside observer without a working knowledge of true American history might think that recent events such as the taxpayer bailout of the banking industry herald the initial movements of America towards a more socialist state.
True
American history? What does he mean by this? Does he mean that "truth" is the subjective recollection of historical events as told from a perspective of the working class, ruling class, native American? It's ambiguous and unclear. But to introduce your article with an ambiguous statement such as this severely limits the efficiency of your rhetoric.
Socialist state? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of a socialist state? In other words, what makes a socialist state a socialist state? Is it a command economy? Is it a government owned system where the state controls all institutions? Again, if one wants to present a refutation as how "socialism" is fallacious, it is important to first describe what socialism is.
quote:
Indeed, there are many in positions of influence who would like nothing better than a socialist revolution within our borders.
What are positions of influence? Is this the capitalist elite? Is this President Obama and the Democratic party? Because if one believes that they legitimately desire a socialist state, then why haven't we seen any of the necessary and sufficient conditions for a socialist state presented via the executive branch? You may cite the example of the federal bailout of banking institutions as a "socialist" act. But let's first consider what "socialism" actually is. Socialism is NOT the economic system under which the United Soviet Socialist Republic functioned. Nor is it Cuba, China, North Korea or any other "communist" state's economic system. All of these examples are command economies which fall under the realm of "authoritarianism". One party systems are NOT socialist systems.
So what is a necessary and sufficient condition for socialism? In its simplest terms, an economy controlled by workers and a worker (worker can be a term to mean any disenfranchised or under-privileged individual) based representative government.
So again, if Barack Obama or anyone else from the Democratic party were really socialists, why would they protect the banks or give money to capitalist elites? It's a fallacious argument to say that "individuals of influence" are socialists because they fail to meet the necessary and sufficient conditions! So already, this author is presenting a very unsound argument.
quote:
Truth is, American history is littered with examples of the fallacious thought process of socialism and the results of its attempted implementation. One of the earliest examples of American leaders thinking they could
legislate away the laws of human nature
was recorded by William Bradford in his journal, Of Plymouth Plantation (1620-1647). This example should be studied and understood by all who profess to love Liberty today.
And this MD immediately understands and knows full-well what human nature is? This has been a topic of philosophical discourse for over 2300 (Plato- approx. 348 BC) years. Despite anthropological discoveries (which I will get to in a bit), this MD has definitive, objective evidence of what human nature is?
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679AD) said within his book
Leviathan
with saying that life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." He supposedly coined the term "the State of Nature" or the state of society before the rule of positive law (not going to get into the details about positivism, read a book if you want to find out). Think primitive cave men before any civilization. Now, Hobbes fully believed that every human being simply sought to maximize his or her own private individual interests. In other words, we're nothing but utility (or happiness) maximizers. So Mr. Berry would probably agree with Hobbes. Which is fine and dandy, except that many other political philosophers have since refuted Hobbes.
For example, John Locke (1632-1704AD) argued that reason was the law that guided man in the state of nature. He believed that by being members of society, we essentially "signed a contract" with one another that we would not harm each other or deprive each other of property (which he even interpreted one's life as property) since we ultimately would not want it done to ourselves. This is what prevented man from killing another man in the state of nature. Now, Locke was one of the most significant and influential philosophers for the American founders. The idea of property rights, the rule of law, the pursuit of happiness, all of essential principles found within Locke's writing. Thus, Locke simply built upon Hobbes.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) argued that Hobbes was incorrect in that he simply took their society and removed the rule of law, rather than understanding what man was in the state of nature. If we applied the same thing today, imagine what would happen to our world if we eliminate police, the military, and any sort of legal system. It would be chaos, and yes, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Hobbes was correct in this sense. However, what was man like before the advent of law? Was IS human nature? Rousseau argued that division and self-interest maximization is a product of civilization, and it is NOT human nature. He argued that man is neither good nor bad, but simply a product of society.
David Hume (1711-1776) as wikipedia says (in an accurate manner as I have read his work) argued that the "state of nature" hypothesis in political philosophy is a rhetorical ploy, or at best a thought-experiment, and should not be taken seriously as a statement about what human beings have historically been or done. So essentially, Hobbes' claims that we are all self-interest maximizers, and Rousseau's claims that our bad habits are a product of civilization, are ultimately incorrect in that they cannot accurately depict man before the rule of law/civilization.
So flash forward to the 20th century. John Rawls (famous Harvard philosopher 1921-2002) (again from wikipedia since it's a decent explanation of his theory of justice) "...utilized what amounted to an artificial state of nature. To develop his Theory of Justice, Rawls places everyone in the original position. The original position is a hypothetical state of nature used as a thought experiment to develop Rawls' theory of justice. People in the original position have no society and are under a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing how they may benefit from society. They do not know if they will be smart or dumb, rich or poor, or anything else about their fortunes and abilities. Rawls reasons that people in the original position would want a society where they had their basic liberties protected and where they had some economic guarantees as well. If society were to be constructed from scratch through a social agreement between individuals, these principles would be the expected basis of such an agreement. Thus, these principles should form the basis of real, modern societies since everyone should consent to them if society were organized from scratch in fair agreements."
So we return to the original question, what is human nature? Are we truly self-interest maximizers who seek only to promote our own utility? No, of course not. Even looking at anthropological discoveries we determine that man (40,000-20,000 BC) often lived in communal settings in order to survive. Also, what of the native American populations prior to European colonization? They had no sense of ownership and thrived mostly in pure communal settings. So again, for Mr. Berry to make a fundamental claim on what human nature is (without a reasonable explanation) creates major problems.
So far as the rhetorical statement of encouraging anyone who "loves liberty ought to study this example", again how does socialism hurt or eliminate liberty? If anything, socialism enhances liberty because it eliminates the concept of economic privilege (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege
). Under the confines of capitalism, property ownership is a necessary condition for liberty. This is not only a fallacious, and blatantly filled with rhetoric, it is incorrect assumption.
quote:
Most everyone feels in their heart that Americans today suffer from at least some degree of moral decay, lack of principle, and wavering resolve. As is human nature, we tend to project our own current state of morals and mores onto any story we hear from the past. So rather than project ourselves onto this story, let me briefly remind the reader exactly who we are talking about in this story.
Again, he utilizes the terminology of "human nature." What is human nature? Do we naturally decline in morality (a social construction) because it is a biological trait of the homo sapien? Ambiguity does not produce a SOUND argument (
http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/
).
quote:
Plymouth Plantation was peopled(sic) by Pilgrims who had endured terrible hardship that few today could understand; and in search of religious freedom, had traveled farther that (sic) most today would dream of venturing. They were rock-solid Christians, ready to stand together against any foe, who believed that God was always watching and ready to mete out punishment for those who transgressed. They were totally and completely committed to family, church and community in ways we find difficult even to fathom today. So, if any society of like-minded, charitable people would ever be able to work together in common for the good of their society, it should have been the people of Plymouth Plantation. We will find, however, that human nature prevails even in so devout a group as this, and despite the best intentions of the learned men of Plymouth, their experiment with the socialist idea was a quick and painful failure.
So the author assumes that the necessary conditions for collectivist systems are individuals who devoted to family, church, and community? He categorizes the Puritans simply as "good-ole, god-fearing people". Yet, the Puritans were people who were considered extremists and were subsequently ostracized for their warped, moral extremist views on life. The author assumes they were the best potential group of people to have a "collectivist" experiment. Yet they believed firmly that women were sub-par to men, and the native Americans were godless heathens and brought disease and war upon them. They weren't perfect, and the author is trying to argue that "Since it didn't work with these 'good people', then it will never work because of human nature!" which he coincidentally fails to adequately explain or even reference what "human nature is"
So the author continues on to describe what happened in the Plymouth Colony when they utilized collectivist standards versus individual self-promotion. Etc. etc.
[uote]The following point cannot be over-belabored; even the most devout group of Pilgrims willing to semi-circle the globe in search of religious self-determination was unable to retain its morality when shackled with the soft chains of socialism. Even devout Pilgrims malingered, pilfered and waivered while living under socialism. If upright Pilgrims cannot be made to toil productively for their collective community, what do we expect to happen when such ideas are fostered on this current generation raised on television and text-messages and junk food?[/quote]
So let's get this straight, he's equating the federal bailout plan for the banks to the direct distribution of food and goods within the Plymouth colony? Never mind the fact that supporting a failing banking industry is FAR from socialism, and is very much a strong capitalist principle (protect the elite, maximize potential for profit, economic rise and fall, etc.), his comparison is blatantly inaccurate.
If we truly lived in a socialist state, we would promote public institutions to their fullest so that individuals (workers) could have access to intrinsically valuable aspects of human life (education, food, clothing, shelter, and health-care). Obama hasn't proposed a single-payer system... if he truly was a socialist, he would. He is working with the confines of a capitalist system and
regulating it appropriately
as opposed to a complete government takeover. Thus, it is extremely incorrect and inaccurate to call Obama or the DNC socialists.
This is a very poorly argued article and a really bad reference, Adam. Do better.
Last edited by Dan Moilanen on Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:14 am; edited 1 time in total |
_________________
-Dan
"I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx |
|
Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:43 pm |
|
|
back again
F L I N T O I D
|
as usual......  2tap???? |
_________________
even a small act of goodness may be a tiny raft of salvation across the treacherous gulf of sin, but one who drinks the wine of selfishness, and dances on the little boat of meaness, sinks in the ocean of ignorance.
P.Y. |
|
|
Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:10 am |
|
|
twotap
F L I N T O I D
|
I was gonna try to read all that but I got eye fatigue. What the f--- was Dan rambling on about now??  |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
|
|
Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:41 am |
|
|
Domet
F L I N T O I D
|
quote:
twotap schreef:
I was gonna try to read all that but I got eye fatigue. What the f--- was Dan rambling on about now??
Well, basically the tl;dr version is that the article Adam linked in previous thread (here:
http://flinttalk.com/viewtopic.php?p=47423#47423
) was poorly argued and reasoned. The author makes bad arguments by analogy, ambiguity and makes broad, generalized claims about human nature which any social scientist worth their merit will tell you is bogus to begin with.
There were some neat replies about the specifics of "individualism" v. "collectivism" towards the bottom of the post with relation to the original article you should give a quick read to. tl;dr just wouldn't do it justice. |
|
|
|
Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:04 am |
|
|
Dan Moilanen
F L I N T O I D
|
Thanks for the kudos.
I simply wanted to point out that simply "agreeing" with an argument doesn't make it correct. It's important to recognize the difference between rhetoric and reason. I hope by at least disseminating some of the argument and by providing counter-examples that I could at least reveal how unsound it really was.
Thus. it's important not to simply "jump" on the first essay you see written on a website randomly.
Also, twotap, this is nothing compared to what you see in academia... there would be an additional 50+ pages going into explicit detail haha. |
_________________
-Dan
"I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx |
|
|
Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:13 pm |
|
|
Domet
F L I N T O I D
|
quote:
Dan Moilanen schreef:
there would be an additional 50+ pages going into explicit detail haha.
Dan, have you seen this site?
http://pluralisticuniverse.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/page-and-reference-counts/
It's basically a quick look at the increase in pages of academic pages (starts with the American Journal of Sociology) over time using basic plot scattergrams. I thought it was kind of neat, and said something about academia (my conclusions differ from theirs). Sometimes, academia
is
a little full of itself XD. |
|
|
|
Sat Sep 26, 2009 11:15 am |
|
|
Adam
F L I N T O I D
|
|
|
Sat Sep 26, 2009 9:19 pm |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Register
Profile
FlintTalk.com Forum Index
> Political Talk
