Bigthink - User Ideas Feed

On Libertarianism and Ron Paul

Bigthink — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:29:33 +0100

There have been a lot of posts recently about unfairness in the media toward Ron Paul, so I'll shed some light since it seems a lot of people don't understand what Ron Paul stands for and what Libertarianism is.

The original US constitution and Bill of Rights is the probably the closest any society has come to the Libertarian ideal. Libertarianism is about negative rights, meaning that nobody can stop you from doing something that does not infringe upon the rights of someone else. Most of the bill of rights are examples of negative rights, freedom of speech and religion, gun rights, etc. There are no positive rights in Libertarianism, which are entitlements, such as the right to education, healthcare, basic needs (welfare, unemployment), equal opportunity, etc.

Libertarianism believes that the morals of people and the free market will fill those positive rights, that private schools and healthcare will be better than public, that the wealthy will take care of people who fall on hard times, that the magic of the free market will prevent monopoly from controlling it.

Well, after 250 years the American political landscape has come far from it's Libertarian ancestor. Social programs, anti-trust laws, public education and utilities have have given entitlements to the people. Ron Paul and other Libertarians believe that the US needs to go BACK to strict constitutionalism, BACK to the way things were in America 250 years ago. So you need to ask yourself, are we worse off now then we were 250 years ago? If libertarianism and the free market work then why was there a civil war? Why where the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust acts passed? Why did FDR create the New Deal? America has spent 250 years tweaking its politics to make it better and to keep it current, why would you destroy all that work? Only if you think that America was truely a better society 250 years ago.

Finally, I'll say again that a Libertarian would be completely opposed to the government forcing a TV or radio station to give a candidate equal air time. Ron Paul himself would say that he has no positive right to equal air time, and that the station has the right, without intervention, to pursue their best profit by talking about only the candidates that will draw the most ratings. Any supporter of Ron Paul who complains about his media coverage does not understand what he stands for.

Re: Can anything in life exist without also containing its opposite?

Bigthink — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:22:57 +0100

I commented this on a similar idea and thought I would post it by iteslf. I've been noticing similar ideas...

This is in response to someone who was trying to argue for objective truth by saying that a circle cannot be a square:

My response was that nothing is a circle or a square. Perfect circles and squares don't exist in nature, everything is somewhere in between. I then realized that any description of anything follows this same line of thought. Reality is an infinitely incoherent mess. We create dualist extremes that do not exist as relative points between which we can define reality.

Take a simple fork for example. How do we describe it? It is shiny - a measure of how much light it reflects. There is no substance known that reflects or absorbs 100% light, yet we use those extremes as reference points to define values in between. What are it's physical dimensions? Nothing in nature has zero or infinite length, but we need those reference points to define values in between. I can go on...

I guess the point is that we create opposites so that we can define reality between them. It is by our own definition only that there is truth or falsehood. Reality lies somewhere in between.

Hope that makes sense to somebody

Ron Paul is a victim of his own policy!

Bigthink — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:00:57 +0100

Why does the media ignore Ron Paul? It's simple - short tail economics. Media companies only have so much time, space, and resources. Their goal, like any business, is to maximize their profits. From that standpoint, it makes the most sense to focus their resources on the few candidates that will attract the most ratings. It's the same reason that Wal-Mart does not carry that obscure Frank Zappa CD you are looking for. They have limited shelf space, and in order to maximize their profit, they fill that space with the CDs that they think will sell the most.

The absurdity of this whole issue is that the only way to make the media report on the candidates equally would be through government intervention (as Dennis Kucinich tried and failed to accomplish recently in Nevada). As a Libertarian Ron Paul would be strongly against such intervention and would favor the decision of the corporations to maximize their profit. Therefore, in the end, Ron Paul's voice is being drowned in his own political philosophy! How fitting!

Suicide and faith are both cowardly escapes from reason

Bigthink — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:21:47 +0100

Life is an absurd struggle between the human longing for meaning, order, and unity, and a reality which is void of all three. As odd as it sounds, there is joy to be found in the struggle.

"But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself."

"He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool"

- Albert Camus

One gives up the struggle by ending his life, or by accepting a truth without reason (faith). It has been said thorughout history that joy is found in the journey, not at the end goal.

Re: Why are you a vegan?

Bigthink — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:10:05 +0100

: What makes people think that animals "suffer" in the human sense? What makes people think that other life - Plants, insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses, etc don't suffer?

People can only understand emotions in terms of their own experience with them. Most would agree that we do not like to suffer, and so we logically conclude that other people don't like to suffer. So the question is, can other non-human life suffer? And if so, which life?

If we can agree that human suffering is wrong, then the we must accept one of 3 possibilities:

1. Non-human life cannot suffer, therefore it is not wrong to harm non-human life and it is acceptable to eat anything (the most common stance among people)

2. All life can suffer, therefore it is wrong to eat any life. This stance is impossible, since we need to eat organic life to survive

3. There is some arbitrary point at which life suddenly gains the ability to suffer. In this case, a person must draw a line as to where the suffering begins. Most people with this stance draw that line close to the human branch of evolution. Some will not eat read meat, others will go further to birds, and then fish

Personally, I find the 3rd stance (Vegetarians and vegans) to be irrational. I'm not sure how a person can say it is wrong to kill a cow, but acceptable to rip a weed out of a garden. It is wrong to eat a fish, but acceptable to eat a mushroom. The difference, biologically, between man and plants and other forms of life is not as great as most people think. I find this stance hypocritical. That of course does not mean that I would recklessly harm non-human life because it is unimportant - man is still a part of the Earth and its ecosystem, and our survival is contingent upon us taking care of the earth and everything upon it. But I don't think eating animals is going to destroy the ecosystem, as long as we take care not to hunt to extinction. Plus, meat tastes really good

Absolute Faith Leads to Fundamentalism

Bigthink — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:23:10 +0100

: Absolute faith in anything is bad. When people put absolute faith in something and a question arises that challenges that faith, people become irrational and immoral in an attempt to squash that challenge. This leads not only to religious fundamentalism, but also political fundamentalism.

The most obvious example is Islamic fundamentalism, which has given itself the mission of destroying every person on Earth that questions its faith. Another example would be Russian communism. They had so much faith that their leadership would lead to Marx's promised utopia, that when it didn't happen, they turned to violence and massacre against the people to make it happen.

I can't think of any accomplishment in human history that could not have been accomplished without absolute faith. You don't need to have complete doubt to have some doubt, and you can still have faith, even with some doubt. That is the basis for reason

Reinventing Judaism

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:57:48 +0100

: I think Judaism can be and needs to be reinvented. But first we must determine what makes a Jew today:

Is Judaism the following of all the law in the Torah? No. Even the most orthodox do not follow all the laws. The rabbis throughout Jewish history have "reinterpreted" the law of the Torah because it was no longer compatible with modern human morality.

Is Judaism an ethnicity? Partly, but anyone can still convert to Judaism. Jewish people adopt and raise their children Jewish. Who can really say that their lineage goes back to the ancient Hebrews?

Is Judaism a belief in god? Not anymore. Secular Judaism is on the rise worldwide, and Israel, the Jewish state, actually has one of the highest concentrations of atheism of any country in the world.

Is Judaism the following of traditions? Partly. Traditions change, and new ones are still being created today, though Jews still celebrate many of the same holidays as their ancient ancestors.

So then what is Judaism? In my opinion, it is a value set. It is a way of thinking. It is a code of morality and ethics that preaches education, questioning, righteousness toward other people, and compassionate justice. This moral code has its origins in the Torah, but it has evolved greatly over the last 2,000 years.

So how can we reinvent Judaism? I'd like to borrow the idea of Michael Carin in his book "The Future Jew". Over 2000 years ago, the Jewish people changed the world when they introduced the concept of monotheism, one god, to a polytheistic and pagan Europe. It is time for Jews to take up that task once again, this time by rejecting the one god, and showing to the entire world that the human values of education, questioning, righteousness toward other people, and compassionate justice were not given to us by a god, and do not need a god to continue. There is no need to throw away tradition, no need to change the method of teaching. Jews can reinvent themselves by rejecting god and proving to the world that it is the wisdom and values taught throughout Jewish history that have kept the people alive to this day, and not a belief in god

WHAT IS GOD?

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:16:36 +0100

In a forum like this there are bound many discussions on the existence of "God". The discussions have little meaning though if every participant is discussing a different concept when they use the word "God". Maybe here we can see some of the differing opinions of the concept of "God" and perhaps settle on some definition that can at least make our discussions more meaningful.

Some examples of differening concepts of god:

The personal God - an intelligent being/force that interacts with humans on a personal level

The creator God - an itelligent being/force that cretaed the universe, but has left us free to do as we please

God as truth - the only absolute trouth in a world of chaos and uncertainty, not necessarily a being

God as the Undifined - everything that we, as humans, cannot understand or comprehend about reality

These are just some examples. What is your definition of "God"?

Re: Re: Can anything in life exist without also containing its opposite?

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:28:38 +0100

: It's possible that all reality is infinite. If that is true, the only way to make sense of anything is to draw boundaries in which to define things. It would then make perfect sense to say that the opposite of everything inside that boundary is the infinity that remians outside.