Why is there so much liberal hate?

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But I'm willing to bet your notion of "just" is different from mine. Your notion is that "justice" primarily preserves order. Mine is more than that. It's about fairness, equity, meritocracy, and last but not least the prevention of suffering.

Justice is such a messy concept that I don't even know where to start or take it from. There's two types of justice paradigms: One where everyone is held to a single standard, and another where another standard is established to accommodate for disproportion. On one hand, it's ridiculous to hold disabled people to the same standard as those that can walk by denying them ramps under the logic that regular people don't get to have ramps. Sure they're held to an equal standard, but do they have equal access? On the other hand, overcompensation sets the precedent for goal post shifting and the concept of proportionately compensating for disproportion gets thrown out of the window. So it gets to a point where it's never enough.

I don't know, this whole concept is so blurry it makes my head spin

Well I admit there is no exact line in the sand. I can see some areas where there is disproportionate compensation. I think our legal system sometimes encourages rather extreme rewards for litigation.

does that justify ignoring the concept?

equal oppertunity does exist, it does require one to disambiguate the children from the parents in matters of education and healthcare at the very least though.

does that justify ignoring the concept?

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Not at all. We all know in our blood, bones and guts that there is Right and there is Wrong. What we don't know is how to qualify that gut-level feeling and how to quantify it so it can be placed in a logical framework.

This may turn out to be an Unsolvable Problem similar to the completeness of arithmetical theories. There are true things which elude our notions of provability.

ruveyn

first off, i agree that there are some very subjective issues where objectivity is almost impossible, it certainly is impossible at this point in time.
provability is in many casees irrelevant when talkibg about those subjects.
in the case of actually allowing people equal oppertunity, not so much, we can easily argue for and against specifics by examining what it allows people to do.
though i dont think there is neccesarily only one right answer in those instances.

Life isn't fair, in part becuase of the people who use the phrase 'life isn't fair' to justify being the type of a**hole who runs roughshod over anyone shorter than them.

That's a good illustration of the problem, Ace. On the one hand we need to try to help those who are down-and-out through no fault of their own; on the other, we have to try to make freeloaders live on their own two feet. It's hard to develop a society that finds a balance between the two. Finding that balance is why we need a government that isn't gridlocked by ideological puritans on either side.

Alternatively, because "fair" is extremely cultural and subjective.

That too. My point was that 'life isn't fair' should be a reason to work on greater fairness, not an excuse to take advantage of other people.

Again, "take advantage" is a moral/ethical statement, both morals and ethics are cultural and subjective therefore that statement while sounding nice serves little other purpose.

In a social species like ourselves, one can translate 'sounding nice' as 'avoiding the social friction that makes it difficult for individuals to work together.'
In addition, a certain level of morality is inherrent in all social species (ie, is not subjective). All humans, everywhere, display a certain reluctance to harm others of their own species outside of a battle setting, for example, unless they have been deliberately conditioned otherwise.

There are countless examples of the interests of individuals not being conducive to cooperation.
Various members of our species disagree on what creates friction. Some would argue that a classless, cashless state would result in minimal social friction. Others that a small state that only exists to protect others from physical harm would lead to minimal social friction.

Again, subjective.



That's hardly relevant in a political discussion. Not killing, raping, pillaging people in your own community is hardly a source of disagreement between liberals and conservatives.

You've also pointed out that in a battle setting its acceptable to use violence, thus those morals are also subjective since violence is ok against those dudes, but not against those dudes. Some people would be reluctant to harm others even in a battle, while some would be happy to harm others.

The conditioning bit is interesting, since there is always an argument that our morals are instilled in us by socialization within a group IE conditioning and that we therefore do not have a "default" moral state. The only reason why I didn't punch about 3 people today is purely down to "The cops would arrest me" which is self-preservation, not morals.

Not completely. The concept of fairness can be found on nearly every culture and was been show to be a universal element of human condition.

The concept yes, but what each human actually views as fair is highly subjective. I may consider it fair, that if you have a girlfriend and I don't, I should get to sleep with your girl once in a while. Somehow I doubt you nor her would agree.

I don't consider it fair that I'm taxed heavily on both income and capital gains so that large government welfare programs can be run so that certain parties can build huge amounts of "voting cattle" that vote to take increasing amounts of my hard earned money to give to people who waste it when I could get a nice return on it. However, about 40 - 50% of the population of the country I live in tend to think that's fair.

I don't consider it fair that I as a politically knowledgeable, highly educated and very well read person have the same influence on how the country is ran as my next-door neighbor who can barely spell his name. Apparently everyone in favor of democracy thinks that's fair.

Before I met my wife, I really would have gone in for that girlfriend sharing thing!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer