Kishkumen wrote:sock puppet wrote:I consider many of your political rants BS as well, but I've not said so.
Listen, you either believe in democracy, or you don't. If you don't, just say so.
I believe democracies exist. I believe that democracies serve the norm of the masses better than dictatorships usually will. I believe that democracies trample on individuals just as dictatorships do.
I think democracy is just compulsion from the group, antithetical to individuality. With a democracy, the individual's interests, to the extent they differ from the norm or majority, are forced to yield. So too is individuality sacrificed to the extent it is not in line with what a dictator wants. Democracy is preferable to a dictatorship from the view of the masses. From the perspective of the individual that varies from the norm or majority, a democracy is as intolerant as a dictator.
Democracies attempt to balance individual rights, to varying extents, with those of the majority. Yet the majorities in democracies keep trying to trample the individual that does not value the same objectives that the majority does. An example playing out in my region is that a city government has tried to intimidate landowners outside the city limits, with the threat of imminent domain taking of property outside the city's jurisdiction, to sell their property so that the city might built a high voltage powerline to serve the city residents. These landowners are not served by the collective of people that is the city, but the city's moral hubris is that it is attempting to do this to 'serve' people living in the city. A federal judge has rejected the city's attempt to force the landowners to sell their property, basically noting that the city has no such authority outside its jurisdiction. Even as recently as 30 years ago, the council and mayor of this particular city would have been reluctant to suggest imminent domain when dealing with property owners inside the city; but the ever voracious appetite of the majority is quickly encroaching on the individual. The 'conservative' Supreme Court recently ruled that Atlantic City, New Jersey, could use imminent domain powers to take property and allow
private development (waterfront shopping center and condominiums). Previously, imminent domain powers could only be used as necessary for public projects.
Kishkumen wrote:sock puppet wrote:I am very familiar with Aristotle, but just as with Mormon or other religious scripture, I do not consider him beyond imperfection and thus I do not accept all Aristotle said without questioning it. I stand by my "BS".
OK, if you are so familiar with Aristotle, then tell me why he is pertinent to this conversation.
I did not interject Aristotle into this conversation, but since you think I ought to answer as to why you did, I suppose that you think Aristotle gives justification for government running roughshod over individuality. Aristotle thought politics one of three science branches, distinguishing it from the contemplative and productive sciences. Aristotle is enamored with the lawgiver, the one who lays the groundwork or immanent organizing principles ('constitution') for a city-state, but does see some lawgivers as better than others. My departure from Aristotle was when he began analogizing the residents as raw material like clay, molded by the lawgiver, the 'efficient cause', into an orderly city-state. I see the residents as preeminent in the mix, and the leaders as those subservient to the residents, indeed as individuals to whom the widest berth of latitude should be given to accommodate individual differences.
Aristotle's justification for the sacrificing of individuality to government is found in man's nature desiring to live together, to be 'political' in the first place. He presumes that "every community is established for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what they believe to be good), ... ."
Politics, l.1.1252a1-7.
In the circumstance on the globe of the city-state as compared to expansive nation-states of today, covering virtually every square inch of land, Aristotle may have made sense. After all, an individual who did not find the benefits of city-states to be worth the individual sacrifices could, as a practical matter, live outside any city-state, and locate in remote enough areas to be left alone while yet there being sufficient natural resources to sustain himself. In that context, there actually was individual choice: to be in a city-state or outside of them. As the insatiable appetite of government to control has stretched its reach geographically overtime, government has now deprived individuals of that choice. (I do note that two of my clients, not tea party-ers, mind you, have expatriated themselves and their assets to South American countries recently, as they find more value in the increased individual liberty in areas with weak governments worth the loss to a degree of the creature comforts afforded in the U.S. But even there, they are not truly in frontier areas.)
Aristotle imbues the community with a collective personality, and assumes "every community aims at some good".
Id. I think that every community has something attractive, to those that choose to join it, or they would not have done so--as compared to what other choices they have. (Again, in the time of Aristotle, individuals had a choice.) I do not however concede as Aristotle assumes that every community aims at some good. I think a community is a collective of individuals around something that they find in common to be attractive (for some, its lethargy that causes them to remain, having been born into it and not knowing they might prefer something else--true pieces of clay, to use his analogy). But it is quite another matter to give each community a personality that has aims, particularly in a time when the choices are becoming ever more similar due to the geographic smothering of government.
Aristotle also explained his standard for comparing types of governments. "[T]he community which has the most authority of all and includes all the others aims highest, that is, at the good with the most authority." His justification for a community trampling individuals is that the community exists for the sake of the good life.
Id., 2.1252b29-30.
On the other hand, I think that the community's intrusion on individuality is only justified to the minimal extent necessary to preserve the greatest degree of individuality from marauders, both from within and without. I do not, as Aristotle does, presume all communities have good aims, that their existence provides the 'good life' just because, in the case of a democracy, it might be what the majority in a geography vote for.
In short, I find Aristotle's arguments for trampling on individuality unpersuasive, particularly in the 21st Century context where there are practically no geographical options for the individual, as there were in Aristotle's time.