Causality isn't tending or probability. It's that if A obtains, then B obtains temporally posterior to it, unless there's evidence of something causally prohibiting B, where A and B are interactive via forces, they're spatially and temporally contiguous, etc.

What I said wasn't about being part loyal, it was about being loyal to parts - only those parts which deserve your loyalty. — Sapientia

I say, and this may be all talk and no trousers, but isn't that being part-loyal? So, you're part loyal not part loyal, partly?

I'm not merely talking about being critical of or disagreeing with certain aspects of my country, since it's possible to do that whilst being loyal to my country. But I don't think that justice would be served by universally taking that approach. Like I said, sometimes the right way to go about it would be to go further by retracting or breaking off your loyalty - or by not committing your loyalty in the first place. — Sapientia

This is not really an answer at all; how exactly did you conclude that being disloyal to your country would best serve justice? I may be wrong in my understanding, but I assume it is because loyalty - even one applied rationally and therefore capable of criticism and fighting injustice - can still potentially form bias somehow? Well, yes, but this bias is for the genuine wellbeing of the state, hence the capacity to criticise and fight injustice. You do not need to fight popular culture by being gothic. You really need to clarify your point and particularly re-think your "part-loyalty" a little more thoroughly, as you say here:

"And in so doing, I've reached the conclusion that only certain aspects of my country are deserving of my loyalty."

Causality isn't tending or probability. It's that if A obtains, then B obtains temporally posterior to it, unless there's evidence of something causally prohibiting B, where A and B are interactive via forces, they're spatially and temporally contiguous, etc. — Terrapin Station

Whether it is or isn't, tending and probability clearly relate to causality, and are relevant to it. If knowledge of a cause is uncertain, then it can only be probable. And if B tends to follow A, in the right circumstances, then that is evidence that A is the cause of B.

I say, and this may be all talk and no trousers, but isn't that being part-loyal? So, you're part loyal not part loyal, partly? — TimeLine

I thought that I might get that response. I meant that I'm fully loyal to those parts. The way that you worded it could be interpreted to contradict that, so I thought that my rewording was a better way of putting it.

This is not really an answer at all; how exactly did you conclude that being disloyal to your country would best serve justice? I may be wrong in my understanding, but I assume it is because loyalty - even one applied rationally and therefore capable of criticism and fighting injustice - can still potentially form bias somehow? Well, yes, but this bias is for the genuine wellbeing of the state, hence the capacity to criticise and fight injustice. You do not need to fight popular culture by being gothic. You really need to clarify your point and particularly re-think your "part-loyalty" a little more thoroughly, as you say here:

"And in so doing, I've reached the conclusion that only certain aspects of my country are deserving of my loyalty." — TimeLine

I find your position rather confusing. It's like you want to have your cake and eat it.

Being disloyal to your country would best serve justice when the situation warrants it. You seem to think that you can somehow do this whilst maintaining said-loyalty - which is absurd.

Being critical is one thing, but fighting injustice is another. You can be both loyal to your country and critical of it, if being critical of it is in the best interest of the country. But if the injustice stems from your country, then you can't both fight that injustice and be loyal to your country.

I don't need to rethink my "part-loyalty", as you call it. That quote of mine at the end of your comment is a clarification of, and consistent with, my position. And I stand by it.

And if B tends to follow A, in the right circumstances, then that is evidence that A is the cause of B. — Sapientia

If B doesn't always follow A, then it's evidence that A doesn't cause B. Something else does.

This talk of A and B is too simplistic, since in reality, there is A, B, C, D, etc.

What I am saying is that we know that A is likely to cause B, which is likely to cause C, and so on and so forth. (Although that is still a simplification).

So, if we say that A is shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, then that is likely to trigger a causal chain which leads to many people panicking and rushing towards the exit. And since we're only talking about likelihood, nothing is ruled out as impossible. It's possible that any number of things will happen. It's possible that everyone in the theatre will react as if nothing had happened, or immediately begin to calmly walk towards the exit in an orderly fashion, without panicking or acting rashly. But that is unlikely.

Whatever the actual outcome, A is the causal trigger, and the subsequent events arise as a reaction to this causal trigger.

Your evidence isn't greater than mine. That a few people in the theatre might not react as everyone else does, doesn't outweigh the evidence in favour of what the likely result of shouting "Fire!" in a theatre will be. You have raised evidence which suggests that this probable cause is not a necessary cause for a particular reaction in some particular cases, but I haven't denied that. My point is more general than that, and it is more about likelihood than necessity.

Tbh the questions of these tests were kinda shitty... Agreeing or disagreeing with a statement is pretty crap (no neutral option) and being forced to select between two statements is even more crap.

What I am saying is that we know that A is likely to cause B, which is likely to cause C, and so on and so forth. (Although that is still a simplification). — Sapientia

Again, causality is not simple likelihood. It's inevitability, unless something is prohibiting the forces involved. You could say it's 100% likelihood if you like, but that's not what you're appealing to.

For whatever reason I can't upload the photo, but I am very Left Libertarian

Being disloyal to your country would best serve justice when the situation warrants it. You seem to think that you can somehow do this whilst maintaining said-loyalty - which is absurd. — Sapientia

Well, this is just faulty logic; you are being disloyal to serve justice for your country when the situation warrants it, but serving justice for your country implies loyalty to your country. You are disloyal to injustice because you are loyal to justice and you do not want injustice in a country you care about.

A 'friend' could pretend to be loyal to me, for instance, but authentically they may only be friends with me because of my social position, what I offer them and how it helps them and their image. But if shit hits the fan and I get sick or fall from all the social graces, do you think that such a 'friend' would remain and support me through it? Nope, I am just a disposable object. A friend would care about my well-being, would criticise when I do something stupid, would protect as much as they would admire. This is loyalty. Those absolute loyal 'artists' do not actually give a shit about their country; they thirst after ideology or power, which is why we encounter holocaust deniers, for instance. They haven't a sense of justice in them. To you, it may confirm the failure of loyalty and this is to a degree true but like pride, which can compel a man to stubborn disregard of facts just as much as it can strengthen a sense of self-worth, it is relative to the intelligence of the individual. So, in the end it is not about dividing loyalty into parts but rather the level of individual ignorance.

Again, causality is not simple likelihood. It's inevitability, unless something is prohibiting the forces involved. You could say it's 100% likelihood if you like, but that's not what you're appealing to. — Terrapin Station

Why are you attacking this straw man? My position has never been that causality is simple likelihood. I already clarified that for you.

I was talking about knowledge of a cause, and likelihood is definitely relevant in that respect. It is obvious that in many situations we do not have certain knowledge of what caused something, so, in those situations, we can only knowingly say what it might have been, and, if there are grounds to, what it probably was and was not. (It's possible that what I think was probably the cause, was certainly the cause, or was certainly not the cause).

I'm saying that for those effected, given what is known, we can rightly conclude that, probably, the shout was a causal factor.

I'm Next Generation Left.

Also:



Closer to the centre than I would have thought.

Ah, I border Average Citizen and 420, according to your nice breakdown.

Well, this is just faulty logic; you are being disloyal to serve justice for your country when the situation warrants it, but serving justice for your country implies loyalty to your country. — TimeLine

You've twisted what I said there by adding your own words to it and altering the meaning. So, even if that is faulty logic, you will have only succeeded in defeating a straw man of your own creation.

I was talking about being disloyal to my country to serve justice, not to serve justice for my country.

You are disloyal to injustice because you are loyal to justice and you do not want injustice in a country you care about. — TimeLine

Look, in the situation I described, I said that the injustice stems from my country. So I would not care for my country, although I would care about the state that it's in. My country would be the cause of the problem. What I care for, and am loyal to, would be something else, like my ideal of what my country should be.

A 'friend' could pretend to be loyal to me, for instance, but authentically they may only be friends with me because of my social position, what I offer them and how it helps them and their image. But if shit hits the fan and I get sick or fall from all the social graces, do you think that such a 'friend' would remain and support me through it? Nope, I am just a disposable object. A friend would care about my well-being, would criticise when I do something stupid, would protect as much as they would admire. This is loyalty. — TimeLine

Yes, I get that. That's not at issue. To continue with the analogy, the issue that I'm talking about is when you do something so bad that your friend should have nothing more to do with you, rather than remain loyal and give you a telling off or a bit of guidance. There should be a red line, and if it's crossed, then that's that. And you'd be wrong to try to make out that that act of disloyalty to you is somehow actually loyalty to you. That would be warped, and would seem like some sort of defence mechanism.

There's no shortage of examples which demonstrate the failure of loyalty, and that includes friends and country. Loyalty should come with conditions if it is to be worthy of being a virtue, and it should not be misapplied. If the latter entails only being loyal to some things, or aspects of a thing, and not others, then so be it.

Should a victim of persistent and severe domestic abuse remain loyal to their partner? I would say no, certainly not. Loyalty in this situation would be bad. Yet, quite astoundingly, some people seem committed to a position in which they must disagree.

I could quite easily come up with similar examples about friends or country.

Why are you attacking this straw man? My position has never been that causality is simple likelihood. I already clarified that for you. — Sapientia

. . . When you have examples of panic, say, not following someone yelling "Fire," you know that yelling "Fire" wasn't the cause of panic.

. . . When you have examples of panic, say, not following someone yelling "Fire," you know that yelling "Fire" wasn't the cause of panic. — Terrapin Station

Are you claiming that these examples outweigh the counter-evidence? Because, in reality, there are so many examples of so many people reacting in this way to these sort of situations, that I don't see how you have a leg to stand on. There mere fact that there are exceptions, in which not everyone involved reacted in this way, doesn't prove anything against what I've claimed.

One counterexample falsifies a causality claim.

I don't believe that you have a valid counterexample to anything that I've claimed.

The people who react in that way in that situation do so for a reason, and those who don't react in that way in that situation (if there are any) do so for a reason. (These reasons have to do with casuality, and wouldn't make any sense without causality). That there may be those who don't react in that way in that situation doesn't falsify my claim at all, since my original claim was just a generalisation, and my subsequent claims that delve further into the particulars were suitably qualified. What you think of as a counterexample could be a counterexample against some sort of absolutist claim that I never made, or it could fail to be a counterexample because the circumstances in the situations that we're talking about aren't sufficiently similar, or it could be some other error in your reasoning or what you take to be true.

Most people in these situations react predictably, and we are able to predict how they'll likely react because of what we know. So you'd have to deny what we already know in order to argue against me. And you'd have your work cut out for you, since what I'm talking about is so well known that it has become common knowledge.

So, I'm waiting for this extraordinary counterexample of yours which defies everything we know about this. Although I think it much more likely that you've made a mistake somewhere along the line.

Anyway, it's about time you said something with a bit more meat on the bone.

I was talking about being disloyal to my country to serve justice, not to serve justice for my country. — Sapientia

That is exactly right, because you are loyal. You are intelligent. You are not inauthentic because the principle, the form of loyalty itself is what you adhere to and not the object, the person, the country etc. I am trying to tell you that you cannot divide that into parts, the objects are themselves divided but not loyalty. You serve objects for justice because of your loyalty to justice. Get it? :-#

What I am trying to tell you is that selectivity on part of loyalty is ignorant, which is why false people' so-called loyalty is interchangeable only when it benefits them. Being morally conscious, you do not view the world subject to this ignorance but rather model your ethical outlook by identifying injustice and positing solutions careless of whether or not it benefits you, examining the causal reasons on part of criminals, agents, institutions, governments etc. Wherever justice is required, you are loyal, so that would mean loyal to your country, to my country, to the world, wherever there are people.

To gain that level of moral consciousness would imply that those who serve justice - as I do - would never allow 'bad' people in my personal space and I was once guilty of that ignorance and paid the price for it. In the end, your examples are merely exposing the very issue I have with the 'parting' aspect of your argument - you are either loyal or you are not - and a dedication to just one object [i.e. a person] is the very same ignorance I am attempting to direpute.

When I seek to punish bad, I seek it only because of a very small hope that they may recognise their own bad actions and become aware or morally conscious since I do not believe that humans are innately evil. Just ignorant. When one is loyal to righteousness or justice, they are inevitably loyal to people, that is, the well-being of all people.

Get it? :-# — TimeLine

Yes.

That is exactly right, because you are loyal. You are intelligent. You are not inauthentic because the principle, the form of loyalty itself is what you adhere to and not the object, the person, the country etc. — TimeLine

Right. I'm not loyal to my country, like I said. You seemed be contradicting what I said.

I am trying to tell you that you cannot divide that into parts, the objects are themselves divided but not loyalty. — TimeLine

What you are trying to tell me here seems no different to what I said when I said that I'm fully loyal to those parts.

You serve objects for justice because of your loyalty to justice. — TimeLine

Yes, I suppose so.

What I am trying to tell you is that selectivity on part of loyalty is ignorant, which is why false people' so-called loyalty is interchangeable only when it benefits them. — TimeLine

I wouldn't say that selective loyalty necessarily indicates ignorance, or is necessarily a bad thing. But it is in some cases, like the one you have in mind.

Being morally conscious, you do not view the world subject to this ignorance but rather model your ethical outlook by identifying injustice and positing solutions careless of whether or not it benefits you, examining the causal reasons on part of criminals, agents, institutions, governments etc. Wherever justice is required, you are loyal, so that would mean loyal to your country, to my country, to the world, wherever there are people. — TimeLine

Yes, in a sense. It depends what is meant by that phrase. Your meaning is different and broader to what I take the phrase to mean. For example, if the context is Nazi Germany and you asked me if I'm loyal to my country, then I would say no.

In the end, your examples are merely exposing the very issue I have with the 'parting' aspect of your argument - you are either loyal or you are not - and a dedication to just one object [i.e. a person] is the very same ignorance I am attempting to direpute. — TimeLine

I'm not sure whether we actually disagree, though, since I don't disagree with that. You are either loyal or you are not. That can be applied to particulars as well as a whole. In terms of my whole country? No, I'm not. I'm not loyal to certain aspects that are supposed to be representative of my country: government, people, culture, for example. I'm not much of a patriot.

Right. I'm not loyal to my country, like I said. You seemed be contradicting what I said. — Sapientia

No, you are loyal to your country because you are loyal to justice and that would mean what is best for the people within your community who are citizens of the state. Patriotism is different to loyalty, the former is the ideological attachment the ignorant have as Schopenhauer states: “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resort the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

I have seen this time and time again where men view women as objects that would benefit their image and only love the object if they comply to this image, trapped in an habitual cycle where they never progress and they are trapped because their lifestyles have made them dependent on this habit. Genuine love, however, transcends this objectification and a morally conscious man would fall in love with a woman because he admires her for the person that she is in principle and vice-versa, where together they support one another to better themselves. To get to this point would be to change everything about the former lifestyle and that is too difficult to change for many people, which is why it continues cyclically and why they remain in impoverished relationships.

Politically, it is the same where the ignorant are trapped in an habitual cycle that only repeats history and often at a disadvantage to others whereas those genuinely committed to justice love and admire what is just and good enough to consistently dedicate themselves toward progress. Because that habitual cycle is so rigid considering people have positioned their lifestyles that traps them in that cycle, diplomatically it is incredibly difficult trying to amount any change.

We don't actually disagree with one another but I think you misunderstand the primary component of my position, namely the division of loyalty. When you reach a level of moral sophistication, you transcend and adhere to the categorical imperative aside from your own or the benefits that this behaviour will have to you personally. Immature or ignorant people are loyal to specific objects only when it benefits them and disregard or abandon the object as though it were disposable - even other humans - when it no longer benefits them, because they see people as objects.

You are either loyal, or you are not. You are either morally conscious, or you are ignorant.

I don't believe that you have a valid counterexample to anything that I've claimed. — Sapientia

Okay, but whether it's a valid counterexample has nothing to do with whether you believe that it is. Yelling "Fire" isn't causal to panic, say, because it's possible to yell "Fire" and not cause panic.

That may not be how you're using the idea of causality, but it's how I use it, and it's the only sort of concept of causality that has any bearing on my ethical stances. Any other concept wouldn't be relevant to my ethical stances.

No, you are loyal to your country because you are loyal to justice and that would mean what is best for the people within your community who are citizens of the state. — TimeLine

Okay, now you seem to be contradicting yourself. You said that the form of loyalty itself is what I adhere to and not the country. Am I loyal to my country or not? Make up your mind. In the mean time, I'll answer the question for you, again. I'm not loyal to my country. And I'm not loyal to my country because, in many respects, either I'm not committed in the first place, or I would abandon such a commitment under certain circumstances.

Contrary to what you suggest in the quote above, neither justice nor the people within my community nor their best interests are equivalent to my country, so loyalty to any of the aforementioned does not entail loyalty to my country.

You're free to construe it in that way, but I don't agree with that.

Patriotism is different to loyalty, the former is the ideological attachment the ignorant have as Schopenhauer states: “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resort the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” — TimeLine

Yes, of course they're different. My point was not that they're identical, but that they're related. They're related inasmuch as patriotism suggests loyalty to one's country. Schopenhauer does a good job of highlighting the potential downside of this.

Okay, but whether it's a valid counterexample has nothing to do with whether you believe that it is. — Terrapin Station

You don't say? That was a pointless comment. Obviously I don't believe that it is a valid counterexample for a reason, and it is that reason, rather than my belief (or lack thereof), which is relevant.

Yelling "Fire" isn't causal to panic, say, because it's possible to yell "Fire" and not cause panic. — Terrapin Station

That's a non sequitur. It's not causal only in those particular cases. It is causal in others. And the cases in which it isn't casual lack relevance to my point, which is about those other cases. The particulars in these cases make them distinct in important ways, so you can't validly use the one to argue against the other in the way that you seem to be doing.

That may not be how you're using the idea of causality, but it's how I use it, and it's the only sort of concept of causality that has any bearing on my ethical stances. Any other concept wouldn't be relevant to my ethical stances. — Terrapin Station

If your idea of causality is linked to erroneous reasoning, as your reply has lead me to suspect, then yes, I do indeed reject it.

Okay, now you seem to be contradicting yourself. You said that the form of loyalty itself is what I adhere to and not the country. Am I loyal to my country or not? Make up your mind. In the mean time, I'll answer the question for you, again. I'm not loyal to my country. And I'm not loyal to my country because, in many respects, either I'm not committed in the first place, or I would abandon such a commitment under certain circumstances.

Contrary to what you suggest in the quote above, neither justice nor the people within my community nor their best interests are equivalent to my country, so loyalty to any of the aforementioned does not entail loyalty to my country.

You're free to construe it in that way, but I don't agree with that. — Sapientia

I can clearly see why you would think that and even whilst writing I knew that the above-mentioned response was likely even with simplistic thought experiments of a platonic nature that attempted to explain my point, so I guess I will use a slightly different method.

You have the Form of Justice, what is morally fair that equally distributes rights and duties proportional to its function and without affecting liberty and social well-being. For me, it is righteousness and I undertake a lifestyle personally that attempts to exemplify the application of this quality of virtue. I say this because like Plato I believe the individual represents the State, and my application of virtue via a moral consciousness ensures I live a good life, just like how justice via a social consciousness facilitates a good communal life.

For Plato, the Form is harmony or at least conducive to and is the remedy for the evils in society; it is clear in the Republic that the dialogues example the inadequacies of political systems, for instance Thrasymachus' dangerous view that leadership is [rather contemptibly] an object for the strong that serves self-interest over the weak, making it clear that power can be exploited. The Form of Justice is the ideal that transcends physical reality and is a model represented by objects or instruments that illustrate this ideal state. From an Aristotlean perspective, it is a distinguished principle that one actively attempts to administer in reality and so teleological that determines an essence to the material world. Loyalty is associative viz., your relationships with people and is paradigmatic to justice; if you are loyal to the Form of Justice, you are loyal to all the people and objects that justice is member to. So, like the Form itself, the essence or ideal, and the instruments or objects that are subject to it, your loyalty to Justice corresponds to your loyalty to people or the objects that are subject to justice.

Legally, you are a citizen of your country and subject to a government that is responsible to represent the ideal Form of Justice. The selection of these executive representatives is debatable (can fascist governments represent justice?) but a country is not just the government if you accept that the representatives are selected by the people and that it is the people - not the government - that determine a country. And since you are loyal to justice, by extension, you are loyal to people, you must therefore be loyal to your country. Those representatives who oppose justice, oppose your country and the people it is supposed to represent because of Thrasymachian ideals that have subjected justice as an apparatus to power.

If you say you are loyal to your country only up until you see an injustice at which point this loyalty is no longer applicable, for me, that makes no sense because justice is applied by people and governments or all objects and instruments of our social reality, including your country. If these instruments are subject to injustice, it is injustice that you are disloyal to and what you seek to modify is the balance or harmony as the Form of justice exemplifies. If you were no longer loyal to your country, you would no longer be loyal to justice and you would simply abandon. That is why I stated that though I may have enemies, I do not seek to eradicate or hurt them but punishment in anyway is wholly under the hope that somehow they may recognise their misdeeds and modify their behaviour, however small that hope may be. I am committed to justice, which is why I oppose injustice; justice cannot be divided.

without affecting liberty and social well-being — TimeLine

This is nowhere specified in Plato, this is your own typically modern import.

Plato I believe the individual represents the State — TimeLine

Plato didn't believe the individual represents the state, rather he meant that the divided State is an analogy for man's own divided soul. The three classes from his ideal state are references to three different parts of the soul.

the Form is harmony or at least conducive to — TimeLine

It is interesting that the very presupposition of harmony means its absence. The very division of the State in three classes which live together harmoniously through the principle of specialisation where each one has his specific function underscores the disunity that is found in the soul and is only overcome through the dialectical activity of Reason. In other words, harmony isn't a given, per Plato. This is in opposition to, for example, Daoism, where harmony is a given, and it is disturbance of that given which leads to disharmony.

The whole Republic is not about external politics, but about the inner politics of the soul. That is the whole Platonic secret. When read in this manner, all of Plato's contradictions disappear.

I don't mean to be rude, but did your reply really need to be that lengthy?

The key point of our disagreement is semantic: about what it means to be loyal to your country. I still prefer my own interpretation. And I don't think that that's through failing to understand your point, however many times, or however many different ways, you reiterate it. I think we just disagree.

For one thing, I think that my meaning is more easily understood, as demonstrated with my example of Nazi Germany. Whether you focus on government, people, or culture, all three of these key aspects which are taken to represent a country predominantly conformed with Nazism, which is not something worthy of loyalty. Hence, if asked the question of whether or not I am loyal to my country, in that context, it would make more sense in my mind to answer no, as I think that most people nowadays with the benefit of hindsight would naturally do.

I use that same kind of reasoning to answer no in the context of my actual country, at the present time.

To answer otherwise in the example of Nazi Germany, as it seems you would do (and, for that matter, as it seems you would do in any other context, since, for you, the context seems to be irrelevant - you'll always divert the focus onto something else, like the best interests of your fellow countrymen, for example), and yet share the same opposition to Nazism, would require a convoluted explanation which conflicts with the approach that I prefer, which is more about whatever comes naturally without overcomplicating things.

This is nowhere specified in Plato, this is your own typically modern import. — Agustino

The social contract theory was suggested in the Republic.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545279?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

And at least my modern "import" has a fixed sensibility that proves my dedication to virtue, unlike:

Pretty much THE common experience, considering the number of moronic women that exist out there... Smart women are a rare find bruv ... many women I can't tolerate for two seconds, much less for more >:O The brain the size of an almond ... :s But it's not just lack of intelligence... It's lack of intelligence combined with arrogance, pettiness, and pride that is the real problem. I've met some quite dumb women who were nevertheless enjoyable to be around simply because they were interesting people, who at least had some decency and humility. — Agustino

Do you want me to get started on the profound inanity, viciousness, and lack of humility in the abovementioned comments that expose your own gender-bias and subjective inadequacies? I hardly think you are in a position to remark about liberty and my use of it.

The social contract theory was suggested in the Republic. — TimeLine

Plato had absolutely no notion of social contracts. Furthermore, Greeks didn't have a developed notion of individuality to begin with... These are just being read back into Plato. If you don't believe me, head back to the Republic and show me otherwise. In fact, even Plato's use of the state as an analogy of the soul is in part based on the fact that the Greeks didn't have a developed notion of individuality and hence couldn't understand except by reference to the community.

And at least my modern "import" has a fixed sensibility that proves my dedication to virtue — TimeLine

Maybe but it also demonstrates that you're not being intellectually honest with regards to what other philosophers have actually thought and will manipulate their thoughts to fit your own ends.

Do you want me to get started on the profound inanity, viciousness, and lack of humility in the abovementioned comments that expose your own gender-bias and subjective inadequacies? I hardly think you are in a position to remark about liberty and my use of it. — TimeLine

LOL!! You are free to take my jokey comment seriously if that's what you think is the right thing to do, however it would be somewhat silly to assume that the comments someone makes half-jokingly in a thread that had already been sliding off topic actually means anything with regards to how they are as people. That would be like assuming that I'm an idiot because I posted that Rakesh video to Heister LOL! Everyone has an outer and an inner personality, it's silly to judge someone by what they say when they're just joking or not talking seriously.

Being critical is one thing, but fighting injustice is another. You can be both loyal to your country and critical of it, if being critical of it is in the best interest of the country. But if the injustice stems from your country, then you can't both fight that injustice and be loyal to your country. — Sapientia

Makes perfectly good sense to me.

There are numerous examples of patriots raking their country over the coals, being scathingly critical. And there are situations where people acted treasonously against their country, in its best interests (the plots to kill Hitler, for example, or Germans who did what they could to contribute to Germany's defeat--most of them were executed).

Several Americans have performed acts many considered treasonous: Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers), Deep draft dodgers and deserters in the Vietnam War, and all sorts of people who become antibodies in a sick body politic.

...it's silly to judge someone by what they say when they're just joking... — Agustino

Haven't you done just that when the joke has been about something you disapprove of, like abortion? Or, do you no longer have a gripe with the likes of Amy Schumer?