The Difference Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing

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Are Left or Right?
I'm Right-Wing 15%  15%  [ 14 ]
I'm Right-Wing 15%  15%  [ 14 ]
I'm Left-Wing 22%  22%  [ 21 ]
I'm Left-Wing 22%  22%  [ 21 ]
I don't honestly care 10%  10%  [ 10 ]
I don't honestly care 10%  10%  [ 10 ]
I have no idea... 3%  3%  [ 3 ]
I have no idea... 3%  3%  [ 3 ]
Total votes : 96

Fuzzy
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11 Apr 2006, 12:24 am

Assassin wrote:
The thing is, corporations, which arent accountable to the public, have much less incentive to help the needy. Just to hammer that point home, how many major corporations do YOU know who get heavily involved in charity?


Your bias is showing, I am afraid. I never said anything about corporations; I spoke of private organizations. The Salvation Army, Red Cross, Mothers Against Drinking and Driving... I can go to google if you really want a list.

Corporations, on the other hand, take a different tactic with charity, one that may be argued as self serving, but ultimately beneficial to society. Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Ford.... all the really big corporations give away money to promote education and things such as overcoming developmental issues, such as deafness, even Aspergers and Autism! They hope that by helping people overcome these problems, they foster the use of their unique talents, and if those people are happier for it; all the better.


Please, dont see things so black and white. Corporations are no more evil than they are good.



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11 Apr 2006, 8:33 am

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Your bias is showing, I am afraid. I never said anything about corporations; I spoke of private organizations. The Salvation Army, Red Cross, Mothers Against Drinking and Driving... I can go to google if you really want a list.

Heh I guess I just interpreted that as meaning corporations.

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even Aspergers and Autism!

I wouldnt use helping people "overcome" Aspergers or Autism as an example to get people with it either one of them on your side, since most of them wouldnt WANT to "overcome" it.

And, I dont see corporations as "evil" - at least not in most cases anyway - just selfish.


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peebo
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11 Apr 2006, 10:44 am

Fuzzy wrote:
Corporations, on the other hand, take a different tactic with charity, one that may be argued as self serving, but ultimately beneficial to society. Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Ford.... all the really big corporations give away money to promote education and things such as overcoming developmental issues, such as deafness, even Aspergers and Autism! They hope that by helping people overcome these problems, they foster the use of their unique talents, and if those people are happier for it; all the better.

corporations do this simply because its in their own interests to do it, no other reason.



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11 Apr 2006, 6:37 pm

Assassin wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Well, the people do tend to contribute to the state in left wing economics.

As I said, people contribute to the welfare of other people, the state merely acts as the middleman.
Whatever, we are arguing over semantics. No government simply puts the money that they receive into a massive vault. That would destroy the economy, and no government tries to hurt the people, that would ruin their ability to stay in power. Even Hitler's regime did a lot for the people(unless you were jewish).

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Megacorporations are controlled by people; they are controlled by the stock holders. Stock holders are only individuals who chose to give up a bit of money to invest in a company

Yes, the stockholders. Most corporations are controlled by 2 or 3 stockholders with majority shares. These are generally the people who are effected least by the companies policy, and therefore they have no reason to restrain themselves in making that policy, whatever makes a profit is acceptable.

Well, even if that statement is true which I tend to doubt it is if some of these companies are so large that they have like 40 billion dollars in revenue and such. However, even if this is true still, the average buyer is the average joe and the average joe will pick the best choice in a given situation. Through the selfish seeking of profit these companies have to try to get the most public support. Considering the size of the economy, it would be difficult for anyone group to get absolute power unless the government was being too favorable to that group.

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We hear plenty of times about 10 year olds today in mini-skirts, teenage pregnancy on the rise, higher divorce rates and stuff like that and conservatives tend to blame culture for these things.

Thats not morality thogh, its traditionalism.
Morality is a system of right and wrong conduct. These things are the result of conduct that is considered bad. Therefore they want greater morality.


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The conservative response to this issue is to attack the content and try to instill traditional values to combat this

So... they try to stop people from thinking for themselves, deciding for themselves whats wrong and what isnt? Yup, sounds about right.

No person can stop people from thinking for themselves or deciding for themselves. However, moral decisions made by individuals can have dire consequences for society. The right wing response is to try to prevent these decisions by trying to instill within people the "right way". The world only becomes worse if everyone makes bad personal decisions.

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Simply stated, there is only one morality for society or there is no form of morality guiding it at all and in the US we are currently undergoing a culture war to decide which morality will win in the end.

There IS objective morality, which is WHY I dont believe "traditional values" or the "law" hold any worth - nobody has the right to decide on anyone elses behalf what that objective morality is, that would make it SUBjective morality, of which there can be no such thing.
Well, the objective morality of the nation is what holds it together to some extent. Strongly differing beliefs prevent people from forming effective policy and things of that nature. In fact, strong differences in personal beliefs are how civil wars are formed. It is a good thing for society as a whole that most people conform due to their social instinct. Laws are necessary for a working society, without them everything falls.

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his policies would either not be allowed or have to be forced upon the people.

Not necessarily. As weve seen post-9/11, a climate of fear can lead people to accept extroardinary (and extorardinarily extreme) things (such as, for example, the PATRIOT Act)
The patriot act is not really extreme in the scope of things. Most people are not affected by the patriot act at all and the government does not have the power to spy on all 300 million Americans and probably lacks the power to get information on an eigth of that amount either. A law that has little effect on people and that can only have effect on people if they do something that is seen to be a threat to the nation. A totalitarian police state is still far far away, if it weren't far away then there wouldn't be as many people complaining about it.

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Well, Stalin's economic actions were sort of leftist as he did not use capitalism or corporations to achieve his ends.

Yes, some elements of his economic policy can be interpreted as communist (except allowing all those people in Ukraine etc to starve to death >.<##########) but as I said, communism doesnt depend on economics, it depends on the base philosophy of everyone being equal, and Stalin most certainly did NOT believe (or at least, he didnt show it if he did) that everyone was equal. "Some are more equal than others" simply dosent hold.
Left wing economics is greater government control of the economy as opposed to greater private control of the economy as is preferred by the right wing. Stalin has a government that had massive control over his economy and that did not allow for much in terms of private enterprise. That means that economically he tended towards the left.

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Right wingism is not totalitarianism.

Maybe not, but totalitarianism is right wing.
Well, one thing is I think that you are a person that tends towards leftist anarchism type political beliefs and therefore you are projecting upon the right your personal dislikes I think. I think that both the right and the left have their own totalitarian tendencies.

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The US Republican party which is probably further right than most parties has a libertarian wing to it.

Methinks youll find it also has a totalitarian wing to it (they call it the White House :evil: )
The Bush administration is not totalitarian. If it was then it is doing a pretty bad job of seizing control over the American government. It is true that the neo-cons are a group that believes the least in smaller government but still Bush has acted in some ways that Hitler would probably not approve of.

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Modern right wing parties usually want to downsize the government

George Bushes Republican Party and Tony Blairs New Labour Party suggest otherwise.
George Bush does not control the republican party, which has been seen in the many occasions in which they have voted against him. Also, I believe that Bush has tried to put in some policies that would end up decreasing the size of government, however, the problem lies in the fact that we invaded Iraq based upon bad evidence.

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The left wing tends to be more anti-religion as it is more common for left wingers to claim that religion is an oddity or a perversion that causes humanity great harm and that should be eliminated. The attack on religion is not very right wing because of the fact that support of religion is something the right supports, support of secularism or disagreement with religion is more leftist but most leftist groups would stop at the first and not go to the second.

The fact that a lot of rightists are religious and that a lot of leftists (and a lot of right-wing pseudo-leftists) are anti-religion is purely coincidental, just as much as more left-wingers having brown hair (I dont know this, but they might, and Im just using an equally irrelevant example to illustrate the irrelevance of the left-right split on attitude to religion)
Uh.... I tend to think not. The left wing has traditionally been somewhat opposed to the traditional power of the church. This is not a matter of a correlation without a cause, this is because of the traditional power of religion and the fact that the left has traditionally seen this as a bad thing. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, a term that is not very favorable and considering that even in modern days there are leftists that claim religion is a bad influence I would have to think that maybe it is the worldview that has something to do with it. Also, simply because your view on the left wing differs from their view does not mean that they must be wrong. No person is an embodiment of all of the views on a wing.

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Corporations are supposed to do 2 things. Pay off all of their supporters in a manner that maintains their position(stockholders to CEOs to workers) and to give us cheap goods.

They only do the second one because its in their interests to do so. And in most cases, corporations pay there workers as little as they can get away with.
The entire idea of the economy is self-interest. So the fact that they do the second one is a sign of success. Also, it is not odd that they pay the workers as little as they can get away with, workers try to get the best job that they can find. If we have a limited labor population then what will happen is that companies will bid against each other and raise wages. As well, a low wage in America is a very good wage for somebody in some other country. Illegal immigrants are paid as low as it is possible for companies and yet they still keep on coming for jobs.

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It is for individuals to decide what to do with their money.

Agreed. Its how MUCH money they should have to do it with that we disagree on - you seem to think some people have more right to money to decide what they want to do with than other people.
[/quote] Well, some people are more valuable to the economy. A janitor is not as valuable to society as a brilliant engineer so therefore in order to keep the engineer happy and to encourage other people to take the path of engineering the wage received is higher. Differences between wages is a natural thing in a society as in order to maintain the maximum freedom and to encourage certain careers and stuff like that then we will have to have differences in worker pay. It does us no good to have the highest paid janitors if all of our engineers leave the country for other jobs, and massive government controls over the economy keeps it from being efficient and effective which would most likely cause us to lose some of our edge in technologies and productivity.

NeantHumain wrote:
The choice is truly simple. Would you rather have an ineffective Democrat as your president or an evil, Machiavellian Republican in high office?
I would rather have the Republican candidate in this case as an evil, Machiavellian Republican would still ultimately try to help the nation. Hurting the nation would ultimately not be in this person's best interests as it would hurt his chances politically and lead to greater chances of scandal and of a reputation that would be ruined. Incompetence is the highest problem in any organization and incompetence leads to greater corruption. We can see this in the administrations of Grant and Harding, both individuals were likeable guys but their systems had massive corruption without them being able to know better. Incompetence is almost always worse than questionable ethics because at least the latter has a plan, the former doesn't and would kindly screw things up greatly.



Assassin
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11 Apr 2006, 7:21 pm

Oooooh Jesus Christ thats a long post... 8O

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Morality is a system of right and wrong conduct. These things are the result of conduct that is considered bad. Therefore they want greater morality.

Morality does not = traditional values
Morality does not = religious values
Morality does not = the views of conservative b**tards who want to outlaw everything from gay marriage to straight divorce (or those of any other group, before you say anything)
And while were at it...
Morality does not = law

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No person can stop people from thinking for themselves or deciding for themselves. However, moral decisions made by individuals can have dire consequences for society. The right wing response is to try to prevent these decisions by trying to instill within people the "right way". The world only becomes worse if everyone makes bad personal decisions.

I didnt say right-wingers succeed in stopping people from thinking or deciding for themselves, what I said was that they try. And you agreed with me - see 'However, moral decisions made by individuals can have dire consequences for society. The right wing response is to try to prevent these decisions by trying to instill within people the "right way". The world only becomes worse if everyone makes bad personal decisions'. Also, that isnt entirely accurate. The effect is much much worse if right-wingers indoctrinate the majority of people to make bad decisions than if a few individuals make their own bad decisions.

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objective morality of the nation

As I said before, thats an oxymoron. If its of something, including a nation, then its subjective. And if its subjective, then why not ignore it? Your argument doesnt hold here.

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In fact, strong differences in personal beliefs are how civil wars are formed.

In many cases, civil war is better than a particular side not rising to the challenge. Take, for example, Britain in a few months time (if all our worst nightmares come true, that is, but its more likely every day that they will). While well all be a LOT better off if Blair aborts his abolition of democracy, or is stopped through democratic/diplomatic means, you MUST agree, surely, that it would be a disaster if, should he succeed, the population just lay down and accepted it rather than raising arms.

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Laws are necessary for a working society, without them everything falls.

That much I agree with. What I DONT agree with is that laws = morals or vice versa.

Mebbe ill answer the rest of it tomorrow, but its now 20 past 1 in the morning here, and Im fscking tired.


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Awesomelyglorious
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11 Apr 2006, 8:30 pm

Assassin wrote:
Oooooh Jesus Christ thats a long post... 8O

Yeah, that was.... I guess I did not expect it to get that long but I guess as an internet discussion goes on it diverges into many different points and as more points are made more points have to be addressed by an opposition so after a long period of time posts get insanely long. I have seen posts that are half of a page on some internet forums.

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Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Morality is a system of right and wrong conduct. These things are the result of conduct that is considered bad. Therefore they want greater morality.

Morality does not = traditional values
Morality does not = religious values
Morality does not = the views of conservative b**tards who want to outlaw everything from gay marriage to straight divorce (or those of any other group, before you say anything)
And while were at it...
Morality does not = law

mo-ral-i-ty (m-rali-te, mo-)n.pl. mo-ral-i-ties. 1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. 2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.

---------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Religious values are a form of morality in that they meet the criteria set by the 2nd definition of morality, the same is true with traditional values. Morality is a part of law because law is a system of ideas of right and wrong conduct, most people have morality that stretches further than the law but the law itself is formed based on moral ideas.

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No person can stop people from thinking for themselves or deciding for themselves. However, moral decisions made by individuals can have dire consequences for society. The right wing response is to try to prevent these decisions by trying to instill within people the "right way". The world only becomes worse if everyone makes bad personal decisions.

I didnt say right-wingers succeed in stopping people from thinking or deciding for themselves, what I said was that they try. And you agreed with me - see 'However, moral decisions made by individuals can have dire consequences for society. The right wing response is to try to prevent these decisions by trying to instill within people the "right way". The world only becomes worse if everyone makes bad personal decisions'. Also, that isnt entirely accurate. The effect is much much worse if right-wingers indoctrinate the majority of people to make bad decisions than if a few individuals make their own bad decisions.

I don't think that my comment amounts to trying to prevent people from thinking or deciding, besides, people don't really need to make their own choices on certain moral aspects, all societies realize that, the right wing disagrees with the extent to which this is true. Murder is wrong in a lawful society, no question, personal irresponsibility is also wrong, the question is how wrong and what parts. That is like me equating the left wing to slavery based on the fact that nobody has economic freedom. Also, what I stated is accurate to a large extent, a mindless mass of right-wing indoctrinated people would be an improvement over the current system. Truly any system would work if everyone was indoctrinated to believe in its success and to work towards that success.

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objective morality of the nation

As I said before, thats an oxymoron. If its of something, including a nation, then its subjective. And if its subjective, then why not ignore it? Your argument doesnt hold here.
We cannot truly know what is objectively true, there are all sorts of philosophies that try to address that. However, the point I am addressing is the belief in objective truth. Believing in an objective truth is not an oxymoron and a nation having its own belief in a certain objective truth is not an oxymoron. There may be a question on whether those things are objectively true or not but certain things must be taken as being true for society to exist in a successful manner.

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In fact, strong differences in personal beliefs are how civil wars are formed.

In many cases, civil war is better than a particular side not rising to the challenge. Take, for example, Britain in a few months time (if all our worst nightmares come true, that is, but its more likely every day that they will). While well all be a LOT better off if Blair aborts his abolition of democracy, or is stopped through democratic/diplomatic means, you MUST agree, surely, that it would be a disaster if, should he succeed, the population just lay down and accepted it rather than raising arms.
Umm... Blair is not on a war with democracy and I doubt that he will need a civil war. There may be some criticisms on his authoritarianism but he lacks the power to control the UK. Also, civil war is really bad for a nation, it often hurts the economy because it is a nation destroying itself, it hurts its international standing as it shows the nation to be politically unstable and creates problems with other nations interfering with the war, it kills many people, and if civil war can be avoided at all which it probably can in relatively stable nations then it should. Civil war creates many problems and does not succeed in solving most just in creating more problems. If your civil war against Blair succeeded you would have to deal with a large population of Blairists that would have to be ruthlessly brought back into the fold. The US Civil war had more suppression of rights by the government than most other times, both during the war and after the war when we tried to reconstruct the South and failed to do so perfectly leading to problems with racism.

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Laws are necessary for a working society, without them everything falls.

That much I agree with. What I DONT agree with is that laws = morals or vice versa.

Mebbe ill answer the rest of it tomorrow, but its now 20 past 1 in the morning here, and Im fscking tired.
[/quote] Laws reflect a form of morality, and mainly a form of morality that is commonly agreed upon. Most people would agree with murder being wrong, same as rape, the question that governments face is what laws to create. For every political belief different laws must be created and these different beliefs reflect different moral beliefs. The idea that capitalism is a very moral system is the opposite of socialism being considered a moral system and the laws created to support the different beliefs would show that.

Anyway, good night, hope you sleep well.



Assassin
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12 Apr 2006, 8:05 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
mo-ral-i-ty (m-rali-te, mo-)n.pl. mo-ral-i-ties. 1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. 2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.

...

Mebbe I should have used different terminology... Right and wrong suffice?

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Murder is wrong in a lawful society

Murders wrong in ANY society, lawful or otherwise. The presence or absence of law dosent effect morality.

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Also, what I stated is accurate to a large extent, a mindless mass of right-wing indoctrinated people would be an improvement over the current system.

I guess we just disagree on the importance of freedom and individuality. To be expected, I guess...

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We cannot truly know what is objectively true

In the case of morality, we know its objectively true, its just impossible for us to have a completely accurate and definate account of what that objective truth IS. Which is why people disagree on the matter.

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Believing in an objective truth is not an oxymoron

I know. In fact, Ive been arguing for this whole debate that there IS an objective truth, independant of anything else. What IS an oxymoron is the idea of an independant truth laid down or dependant on a nation. Its own belief in a certain objective truth isnt illogical, but it would be illogical to say that the countrys belief makes it true or objective.

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Umm... Blair is not on a war with democracy

ummm you obviously havent heard about this....
http://www.saveparliament.org.uk/problem.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2040625,00.html
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/constitution/comment/0,,1724047,00.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=378045&in_page_id=1787
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2006/03/oliver_heald_mp_writes_to_spy.html#more
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/18/nbill18.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/18/ixhome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_and_Regulatory_Reform_Bill
http://s13.invisionfree.com/Codelyoko_Backup/index.php?showtopic=4053 (go down to the Lord of the Net's post, Posted: Mar 1 2006, 01:38 PM)
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=325162006
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/forums/viewmessages.asp?topicid=9198&forumid=19
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2006/02/legislative-regulatory-reform-bill.html
http://www.mdxlawsoc.co.uk/news/archives/2006/03/18/the-bill-to-end-all-bills/
http://eclectech.blogspot.com/2006/02/bill-to-end-all-bills.html
http://arthurnewhook.blogspot.com/ (go down to the heading "BILL TO END ALL BILLS")
And there WAS an Indymedia Ireland report as well, which was the most comprehensive Ive seen, but they must have been forced to remove it cos I cant find it now.

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If your civil war against Blair succeeded you would have to deal with a large population of Blairists that would have to be ruthlessly brought back into the fold.

Considering the reasoning for the the uprising, I doubt anyone would resist it when they were no longer being ordered to do so. The "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill" is something you can feel strongly against, and something you can be indefferent about, but Im not sure its something anyone could feel strongly in favour of.

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Most people would agree with murder being wrong, same as rape, the question that governments face is what laws to create.

Yes, MOST laws do reflect morality. Ill give you an example of where they dont. In Nazi Germany, there was a law against hiding Jewish people from the Gestapo.[/url]


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12 Apr 2006, 6:33 pm

Assassin wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
mo-ral-i-ty (m-rali-te, mo-)n.pl. mo-ral-i-ties. 1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. 2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.

...

Mebbe I should have used different terminology... Right and wrong suffice?

Morality is a system of right and wrong. I dunno, maybe if I saw the difference between the different terminologies I would think differently.

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Murder is wrong in a lawful society

Murders wrong in ANY society, lawful or otherwise. The presence or absence of law dosent effect morality.
Well, no, murder is not wrong in any society. What if our society allowed slavery. It would not be wrong to beat a disrespectful slave to death but that act could be considered murder if we extended that term to any killing of one being by another in a manner that could be considered unjust. Duels would also be considered murder under that term. The reason why I want to extend the term is because murder is defined by its relationship to law. There have been times when many things we consider wrong today haven't been wrong. Throwing a new born away because you didn't want it was alright in the Roman days even though that would be considered despicable today. Also, morality is something that is only defined in the relationship to the people governed by it, my moral structure could be blatantly racist, or outright libertarian, or even psychotic and that would affect the laws that I would want to govern a society.

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Also, what I stated is accurate to a large extent, a mindless mass of right-wing indoctrinated people would be an improvement over the current system.

I guess we just disagree on the importance of freedom and individuality. To be expected, I guess...
Well, right, you consider freedom and individuality as the highest virtues and I consider the 2 things as means to an end. People need some level of freedom and individuality for progress to occur; Sparta was a very powerful city-state, it had even conquered all of Greece at one point which crushed the Athenians, however, despite all of its might it fell. The reason being that it could not adapt. I want adaptivity in a nation so it won't fall but I don't want that nation to be crushed by a Sparta.

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We cannot truly know what is objectively true

In the case of morality, we know its objectively true, its just impossible for us to have a completely accurate and definate account of what that objective truth IS. Which is why people disagree on the matter.
Well, we believe our own morality is objectively true but without proof, the completely accurate and definite account on what objective truth is, we cannot say what is true and what is false. Knowing and believing are different things, I don't really want to get into an argument where this distinction is blurred otherwise it will just fall down to everything is a belief. Let us just assume that there are some constants, the first of which is that reality is real as this is not the debate for dealing with that assumption.

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Believing in an objective truth is not an oxymoron

I know. In fact, Ive been arguing for this whole debate that there IS an objective truth, independant of anything else. What IS an oxymoron is the idea of an independant truth laid down or dependant on a nation. Its own belief in a certain objective truth isnt illogical, but it would be illogical to say that the countrys belief makes it true or objective.
Ok, I have been using the term objective to mean absolute for this entire argument. Just exchange my "objective"'s for "absolute"'s and everything will be fine. It is just that moral objectivism is the belief that some things are objectively right or wrong regardless of human opinion on the matter. It is a form of moral absolutism because of that opinion but I should have used the term absolute because of the fact that objective typically means something else.

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Ok, I read that and still, I don't think he was going to war with democracy. IF he was then he was doing a really bad job at it as the public opinions on the matter did not favor him and favorable public opinions are things that are necessary for maintaining the control that he would want. The move he made was an attempt to cut down on bureacracy, it is almost similar to the American desire for a line-item veto which would give the executive branch great power and is considered unconstitutional by the supreme court but would cut down on pork spending. An enemy of democracy would first target the opposition and eliminate them before usurping power, the fact that Blair did not really do this means that he is probably well-meaning. Former US Senator McCarthy was probably a greater threat to democracy than Blair as a dictator needs popular support in one form or another to maintain dictatorial power, otherwise they will be overthrown because in almost every country the masses outnumber the rulers.

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If your civil war against Blair succeeded you would have to deal with a large population of Blairists that would have to be ruthlessly brought back into the fold.

Considering the reasoning for the the uprising, I doubt anyone would resist it when they were no longer being ordered to do so. The "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill" is something you can feel strongly against, and something you can be indefferent about, but Im not sure its something anyone could feel strongly in favour of.
Well, you may have some point however, the feeling that the revolution was unjust and extreme would still plague the minds of those who opposed you. They would feel as if a radical regime had taken power in an unjust civil war and would cause some problems, plus the civil war would always cause great economic damage and damage to the view of England in international politics. If the conditions were truly ripe for a civil war then some force would make Tony Blair back down, nobody wants a civil war as they would realize the great harm it would do. However, there will always be those who would defend the nation from the usurpers and that will cause much blood to be shed.

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Most people would agree with murder being wrong, same as rape, the question that governments face is what laws to create.

Yes, MOST laws do reflect morality. Ill give you an example of where they dont. In Nazi Germany, there was a law against hiding Jewish people from the Gestapo.[/url]
Uh... actually that was a law reflecting the morality of the Nazis. According to their moral ideas it was wrong to hide the evil jews from righteous justice. However, such a law would be considered evil by our system because to us the Jew is a respected citizen as I believe he should be(just making that clear so you wouldn't see my expression of the Nazi view as a reflection of my own, the internet breeds all sorts of confusion). Laws and governance always reflects morality. Go to this website http://www.moral-politics.com, it has a good political view test that is based on the idea that our political position is based on our moral ideals. You would probably be put somewhere in the Socialist section. The law and the government of a society reflects their moral belief and every law probably reflects somebody's moral belief otherwise it would not be made, however, the law might not be good for people or it might not and it might not reflect the moral beliefs of some people.



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13 Apr 2006, 10:23 am

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Morality is a system of right and wrong. I dunno, maybe if I saw the difference between the different terminologies I would think differently.

Ok, justice and injustice then. That better?

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Well, no, murder is not wrong in any society. What if our society allowed slavery. It would not be wrong to beat a disrespectful slave to death

I beg to differ :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

Being legal doesnt make an evil act right any more than being illegal makes something wrong.

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if we extended that term to any killing of one being by another in a manner that could be considered unjust

Well... considering thats what murder means...

0.o?

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The reason why I want to extend the term is because murder is defined by its relationship to law

No, murder is murder. Law is ink on paper.

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Throwing a new born away because you didn't want it was alright in the Roman days even though that would be considered despicable today.

It was considered fine, but that dosent mean it was. Morality doesnt change based on society. Your not going to convince me that it does no matter how many examples of past and present injustices you throw in my face, because they were just as wrong then as they are now! Ok?

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my moral structure could be blatantly racist, or outright libertarian, or even psychotic and that would affect the laws that I would want to govern a society.

Yes, but it wouldnt effect objective morality. You obviously have no capacity for reason.

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the first of which is that reality is real as this is not the debate for dealing with that assumption.

Agreed. Not that whether or not reality is realcan really be debated anyway, its what reality is thats foggy.

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Ok, I read that and still, I don't think he was going to war with democracy.

0.o did you actually CLICK on any of the links and read the articles? Or did you just read the list of links?

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IF he was then he was doing a really bad job at it as the public opinions on the matter did not favor him and favorable public opinions are things that are necessary for maintaining the control that he would want.

I think youd be suprised how many people have been in favour of his authoritarianism thus far. Granted, most of them havent heard about that bill, but I think a lot of people would support it anyway, or at least continue to support him if the bill goes through.

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The move he made was an attempt to cut down on bureacracy

Yes, but it gives him absolute power in the process. Even the few limits there ARE on the powers he gains from it (not being able to bring in taxes, etc), it gives him the power to rewrite itself without those limits.

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the fact that Blair did not really do this means that he is probably well-meaning

You can be an enemy of democracy and still be well meaning. As I said, I CAN see the logic behind opposition to democracy, it IS an obstacle to efficiency.

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otherwise they will be overthrown because in almost every country the masses outnumber the rulers.

They wont be overthrown unless people get rid of the attitude that one person dosent make a difference. ONE person might not, but 100,000 one persons do. And unless each of those one persons decides to fight, there wont be 100,000 of them.

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Uh... actually that was a law reflecting the morality of the Nazis. According to their moral ideas it was wrong to hide the evil jews from righteous justice. However, such a law would be considered evil by our system because to us the Jew is a respected citizen as I believe he should be(just making that clear so you wouldn't see my expression of the Nazi view as a reflection of my own, the internet breeds all sorts of confusion).

The fact that THEIR LAWS and THEIR SOCIETY said it was wrong didnt make it wrong. Any more than its our laws or our society that makes it right. But weve derailed this debate, its supposed to be about right wing and left wing, but weve made it about moral relativism and moral realism.


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13 Apr 2006, 11:50 am

Left-wing: meaning on the left side of the political spectrum (liberal)

Right-wing: meaning on the right side of the political spectrum (conservative)

I am more moderate than anything else :wink:



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13 Apr 2006, 6:26 pm

Assassin wrote:
Quote:
Morality is a system of right and wrong. I dunno, maybe if I saw the difference between the different terminologies I would think differently.

Ok, justice and injustice then. That better?
Well, justice still has a relationship to morality and to law. If a person's moral beliefs allowed for them to attack any person that disrespects them and if the law backs this up then according to them it would be just. So, beating up on a hobo that calls you a horrible excuse for a human being could theoretically be considered just based upon the society and individuals outlined.

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Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Well, no, murder is not wrong in any society. What if our society allowed slavery. It would not be wrong to beat a disrespectful slave to death

I beg to differ :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

Being legal doesnt make an evil act right any more than being illegal makes something wrong.
You would believe it to be wrong but the people of that society wouldn't think so. If we could decide our moral beliefs without care for societal values then we would have anarchy as people would come to conclusions that would be opposed to one another. Your only proof that beating a slave to death is wrong would be your morality, without that governing function then you would beat all of your lessers if you could get away with it. Laws are not held up by force, they are held up by the moral values of the governed populations, without laws society falls so the only way to maintain society is to make laws that fall in line with the values of people and to have people with the values of the law.

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if we extended that term to any killing of one being by another in a manner that could be considered unjust

Well... considering thats what murder means...

0.o?
Murder is unlawful and that is how it is defined. I tried to use unjust as a term to evoke our moral values as opposed to theirs. A government executing a political prisoner is not murder because it is lawful it does not matter how much we think that the person deserved death or even if we thought they deserved praise, killing by a state or that is authorized by the laws of the state is not murder because it is lawful.

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The reason why I want to extend the term is because murder is defined by its relationship to law

No, murder is murder. Law is ink on paper.

mur-der (murdr)n. 1. The unlawful killing of one human being by another, especially with premeditated malice.

---------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Lawful killings are not murder because murder is defined by its relationship to the law.

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Throwing a new born away because you didn't want it was alright in the Roman days even though that would be considered despicable today.

It was considered fine, but that dosent mean it was. Morality doesnt change based on society. Your not going to convince me that it does no matter how many examples of past and present injustices you throw in my face, because they were just as wrong then as they are now! Ok?
Morality may not change but the perception of it does. Your claim that your moral beliefs are correct is as justified as that of the roman or of the fascist. Do you have proof that your moral beliefs are absolutely correct? A right winger could call you evil with as much righteousness as you have, after all, they could also have an absolute moral belief that does not change with society as well and they could believe as strongly in their beliefs as you do in yours.

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my moral structure could be blatantly racist, or outright libertarian, or even psychotic and that would affect the laws that I would want to govern a society.

Yes, but it wouldnt effect objective morality. You obviously have no capacity for reason.
You claim that I have no capacity for reason yet you are the one who sticks to your baseless belief. I could claim that your capacity for reason is lacking as well. Your response to my attacks has the same foundation as a fascists. Fascists believe in their own moral truth and could claim that their ideal is the truth. Your argument has fallen down to "I believe this is correct so therefore it is" you offer no proof that any of my "injustices" are really objectively injust.

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the first of which is that reality is real as this is not the debate for dealing with that assumption.

Agreed. Not that whether or not reality is realcan really be debated anyway, its what reality is thats foggy.
Well, I have tried to get into debates similar to that, they pretty much fall apart because there is no logic that tells us whether or not what we see is absolutely real. For all we know we could be brains in jars.

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Ok, I read that and still, I don't think he was going to war with democracy.

0.o did you actually CLICK on any of the links and read the articles? Or did you just read the list of links?
Yes I did, just because I don't agree with you on a matter does not mean that my intelligence is less than yours or that I try to remain ignorant. The law was not all powerful, if he got out of control then he would be put down by an angry populace. Long standing governments are hard to take down and anyone who disrupts the balance would be removed by the powers that be.

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IF he was then he was doing a really bad job at it as the public opinions on the matter did not favor him and favorable public opinions are things that are necessary for maintaining the control that he would want.

I think youd be suprised how many people have been in favour of his authoritarianism thus far. Granted, most of them havent heard about that bill, but I think a lot of people would support it anyway, or at least continue to support him if the bill goes through.
So what? The common masses have rarely been the source of great democratic change. We usually get progress through the ruthless competition between political parties. Some group will get angered by what Blair is doing and he will fall out of favor, that is how the system works.

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The move he made was an attempt to cut down on bureacracy

Yes, but it gives him absolute power in the process. Even the few limits there ARE on the powers he gains from it (not being able to bring in taxes, etc), it gives him the power to rewrite itself without those limits.
There are always limits, popularity is one. If he abuses his power then another rival group will get mad at that and campaign aggressively based upon this.

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the fact that Blair did not really do this means that he is probably well-meaning

You can be an enemy of democracy and still be well meaning. As I said, I CAN see the logic behind opposition to democracy, it IS an obstacle to efficiency.
I don't even think that he wants to destroy democracy. Many US presidents in the past have done some things that can be seen as sort of wrong and perhaps authoritarian and anti-democratic, this does not mean that they all hate democracy.


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otherwise they will be overthrown because in almost every country the masses outnumber the rulers.

They wont be overthrown unless people get rid of the attitude that one person dosent make a difference. ONE person might not, but 100,000 one persons do. And unless each of those one persons decides to fight, there wont be 100,000 of them.
All it takes to remove them is restlessness. The powers within the government are often clever enough to exploit the dislikes and hatreds of the people to get their own power. When a situation becomes negative eventually the democratic system will change to deal with this feeling by the people. Blair has nowhere near the amount of power necessary to control a democratic country.

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Uh... actually that was a law reflecting the morality of the Nazis. According to their moral ideas it was wrong to hide the evil jews from righteous justice. However, such a law would be considered evil by our system because to us the Jew is a respected citizen as I believe he should be(just making that clear so you wouldn't see my expression of the Nazi view as a reflection of my own, the internet breeds all sorts of confusion).

The fact that THEIR LAWS and THEIR SOCIETY said it was wrong didnt make it wrong. Any more than its our laws or our society that makes it right. But weve derailed this debate, its supposed to be about right wing and left wing, but weve made it about moral relativism and moral realism.
We have derailed this discussion to some extent but it is still relevant. Moral viewpoints affect the position that people have on the political landscape. Right and Left wings both come from totally different moral ideals and this can be seen in the American culture war and things of that nature. A right winger and a left winger both consider their viewpoints the best viewpoints and will look upon other viewpoints negatively. The extent varies often based somewhat on how far each person is from the other person in terms of moral/political outlook.



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16 Jul 2018, 4:28 am

lowfreq50 wrote:
Assassin wrote:
lenny77 wrote:
RobertN wrote:
Left-Wing is the idea that people are collectively responsible for each other in a society. A Left-Wing government is directly responsible for the welfare of all the citizens in the country.

I was about to say that rightwingers are selfish twats who only care about themselves, but I'll leave them to sort out their own definition.


yeah

I'm a lefty too.
think the most important point right now is: right wing guys dont want support for the weak, and like that "everybody is responsible for himself"- crap... :roll:


right-wingers beleeve that the individual doesnt matter and everything thats done should be done for the good of the state, and that to go against the state is "morally wrong". bullsh*t


LMAO....sorry but I must inform you....

You got the left and right completely backwards. You just described the left-wing stereotype, not the right.
you just repeated their fallacy



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16 Jul 2018, 8:04 am

11 Dimensional Oscillation wrote:
you just repeated their fallacy


12 years after it was posted, really?


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16 Jul 2018, 12:24 pm

'This' is interesting on two levels.

Number one; the Topic that is answered
in Full by Social Scientist, Jonathan Haidt,
at the YouTube Link Below, for the Differences
as Empirically Assessed as that Pertains to both
Biological and Environmental Influences at Hand now
as Far as the Human Liberal and Conservative Conditions Do Live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc

Number two; the Dwindling Attention Spans of Humans and also the Support of this Website, overall, since 2006.
These were the days that made an every day visit to this Site interesting, And not mostly just a side show of mostly Partisan Politics; but Society is changing; Fascinating it is still. It's True one may/can/will learn from Histories too.


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21 Jul 2018, 4:53 pm

Left Wing - socially Liberal, economically interventionist, big government with a strong social safety net, mostly social democrats with a vocal Marxist and Anarchist minority.

Right Wing - socially conservative, economically liberal, small government, small or non existent social safety net with a strong emphasis on hard work and personal saving, mostly conservatives and minarchist libertarians with a vocal minority of monarchists, nationalists, libertarian anarchists (AnCaps), and Fascists.


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