Well it is intolerance when you assume, without prior demonstration, that "equal rights" is universally a value, and therefore you can impose it on other people. Who are you to fight to impose "equal rights" on me? Maybe I don't like this "equal rights". Am I morally wrong if I don't? If you say yes, then you need to mobilise an argument which explains both the origin of this value "equal rights" and its universality. Something that is sorely lacking at the moment. — Agustino
Classical, another instance of labeling :) Also another instance of attempting to get a reaction out of me. Curious that those tactics written of long ago by Saul Alinsky have become so well in-grained into left activists. So let me put things straight. What you wrote above is no argument, but an unsupported generalisation backed up by labeling aimed at marginalisation through ridicule and rhetoric. — Agustino
I did. It's in the post above — Agustino
I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. It's more rightwing memes. You seem to have a problem with the Constitution and the values of due process and fairness that underly it. Can't help it if you have ugly self-serving values. Get used to the fact that people you want to oppress aren't going to allow you do so without a fight. — Landru Guide Us
Oh God, I love the reverso-meme. You've just spent I don't know how many posts making bizarre coutnerfactual claims with loaded language against "leftist", and now you alleged I'm labeling you.
Perfect projection.
You even threw in the Alinsky meme - classic rightwing memery.
And still no factual content after all these posts. It's all conservatives can do.
And no, I won't "argue" with your bizarre counterfactual memes. They have no factual content. Rather I will identify them as ugly little narrative - the rightwing meme. It is how the rightwing mind functions. — Landru Guide Us
No, you didn't. You related bizarre rightwing memes with no factual content, and pretended that you were "in danger" from the left That's the poor put upon conservative meme. It has no content. I asked you for an example, and you can't give it. Instead you ranted that students who protest rightwing agendas are a threat to you.
In contrast, the right has armed militias, a vast network of media outlets, a pernicious ideology that calls on killing people, billionaire supporters and minions like Planned Parenthood shooter.
So your posts are typical rightwing reverso-memes - projecting on normal people the reality of the Right's violence and dangerous activities.
It's what conservative do. — Landru Guide Us
Students recently campaigned to ban feminist Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University because her views were considered offensive to transgender people.
On Thursday, Oxford students tried to ‘shut down’ a debate involving Miss Greer because of her view that a post-operative transgender female could not be a woman.
Cambridge University took down an internet video of historian David Starkey, who is known for his robustly un-PC views, after student union officials and lecturers accused him of racism
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3338867/Universities-dominated-Left-wing-hate-mobs-Professor-says-free-speech-stifled-challenging-views-shouted-down.html#ixzz3v2YXo5Gs
Cato's words spring from the same source as the words of those who claim that ending the oppression of certain groups (non-heteros, women etc) oppresses them. That is to say, it springs from (fear of losing) privilege. Fear of being unable to oppress. — Πετροκότσυφας
If you want to be concrete, yes, I have a problem with Iran hanging homosexuals as long as Iranian homosexuals do not like it. — Πετροκότσυφας
Oppression occurs between individuals and groups within the same culture too. It even occurs inside the groups. It furthermore occurs between individuals. And neither do I believe that present cultures are alien to one another. — Πετροκότσυφας
I do not know. I never claimed that law should always be respected. You are the one that should answer your questions here, since earlier you claimed that if people want to fight for their rights they can do it, even by guns. — Πετροκότσυφας
Again, I haven't claimed that the law should never be broken. — Πετροκότσυφας
Crap. — Πετροκότσυφας
Did I say there aren't? I say there shouldn't be. — Πετροκότσυφας
Obviously, historically, people of various cultures, the "west" included, haven't bought this kind of crap. — Πετροκότσυφας
Well it is intolerance when you assume, without prior demonstration, that "equal rights" is universally a value, and therefore you can impose it on other people. Who are you to fight to impose "equal rights" on me? Maybe I don't like this "equal rights". Am I morally wrong if I don't? If you say yes, then you need to mobilise an argument which explains both the origin of this value "equal rights" and its universality. Something that is sorely lacking at the moment. — Agustino
Rights are such that membership to a group permits protection against harm by appeal to a right, so long as there is a mechanism to uphold the right. If the group is humanity, then rights protect all members of that group (i.e., human rights). If you want to exclude a person or a demographic from protection by appeal to a human right, it is you that needs the argument as to why some humans are to be excluded. Human rights as equal rights have a pretty solid argument from John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, which argues for equal rights as a rational principle. Do you care to take a stab at refuting Rawls? — Soylent
Yes, I would say you're morally wrong because inequality can only be sustained by the irrational, paranoid and destructive principle that one deserves more because of the arbitrary circumstance of one's birth. — Soylent
Well it is intolerance when you assume, without prior demonstration, that "equal rights" is universally a value, and therefore you can impose it on other people. Who are you to fight to impose "equal rights" on me? Maybe I don't like this "equal rights". Am I morally wrong if I don't? If you say yes, then you need to mobilise an argument which explains both the origin of this value "equal rights" and its universality. Something that is sorely lacking at the moment. — Agustino
So, before I go into the question of refuting Rawls, it is you who must prove that there is a group called humanity. — Agustino
So inequality is sustained by Nature herself, and has nothing to do with man. — Agustino
Is it really "universal"?
Yes, by definition. The Declaration applies to the entire planet. (It's not called "the South American" or SE Asian Declaration of Human Rights.) — Bitter Crank
If everyone doesn't agree with it, how can it be "universal"?
Because it is aspirational rather than contemporaneously descriptive. — Bitter Crank
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is toilet paper so long as the UN cannot guarantee them. If the UN can guarantee them, then they risk becoming a global dictatorship. Either way - doesn't look favorable to me.Isn't this Universal Declaration of Human Rights just another form of western imperialism being forced down the throats of third world dictatorships?
Some dictatorial, authoritarian, plutocratic, human-rights-abusing regimes have complained about that very thing, as a matter of fact. And they are right. If the United Nations could, they would and should deep throat any number of cannibal regimes with the big dick of Universal Human Rights. As it is, the UN can't pull off such an act of universal beneficence because it is pretty much hog-tied by the major and minor powers who could conceivably be found to fall short of universal human rights themselves. So... bad actors can rest, assured of their impunity for the short run, at least. — Bitter Crank
What could motivate you to look for human rights? How about self-interest? If you have an interest in yourself, and who doesn't, what right(s) would you need to optimize your ability to get as much of the things that you want? That's the start of human rights. — Soylent
Nature doesn't say we live in societies and communities where we respect property rights, We decided in our own self-interest, and to escape the Hobbesian State of Nature, to submit to a magistrate. Inequality in a society is arbitrary, irrational, paranoid and destructive (i.e., unsustainable). — Soylent
I wouldn't call them human rights, I'd call them the rights that a particular state grants its citizens. Again, the justification for calling those rights "human" assumes that there exists a power structure capable of guaranteeing those rights to all humans. As no such structure exists, or can indeed exist (our differences are too many; + it's too dangerous since it would be too powerful), we are left solely with rights granted to us by our nation. — Agustino
As for what rights I want - that is a question that presupposes that I am a member of a certain society. — Agustino
The way I see it, the left takes certain values, such as equality for all, freedom against culture/norms, etc. and then imposes these over the rest of the world, and anyone who doesn't respect them becomes a misogynist, racist, sexist, etc. — Agustino
towards anything else, absolutely intolerant — Agustino
Who am I to condemn, for example the Islamic way of life and go tell them that their women should have a choice to wear the burkha etc etc? — Agustino
It's their fundamental right to decide what rules are to be obeyed on their lands, and what rules are not. — Agustino
true toleration means not interfering with these. — Agustino
In fact, the world is beautiful precisely because there is diversity and there are many different customs, religions, and cultures. — Agustino
All that is required, I think, are a set of international values, along the following lines: "My land, my rules. Your land, your rules. I will not interfere with you unless you do something that is threatening or damaging to me" — Agustino
This allows a criticism of other nations for the lack of human rights protection on the basis that the nation's policies are inconsistent with the nation's own self-interest (if you can properly identify the nation's self-interest, which is minimally assumed to be sustainability). — Soylent
Not what rights you want, what rights would you need, minimally, to pursue your interests, even the most basic interests of food, shelter and security. People will have different wants as a product of the culture or society to which they belong, but the rights they need are not so (at all) culture dependent. — Soylent
No idea is above scrutiny and no person beneath dignity. — Thorongil
You are someone who is free to choose either to condemn or not to condemn an "Islamic" way of life. Therefore, you implicitly reject, by exercising your right to speak freely, those particular Islamic ways of life that would prohibit you from doing so. — Thorongil
Socrates advocated: "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." — Thorongil
Tell, me, Augustino, do you tolerate these things? — Thorongil
I have yet to see a society founded upon the morally reprehensible survive and thrive. Those things can and do happen - but they are generally brought to an end by the community in which they happen sooner or later. I believe that communities, having the freedom to govern themselves, necessarily make mistakes and learn from them, just like we have made mistakes and learned from them.How can you, based on your criteria for "true" tolerance, which these examples all meet? — Thorongil
True, but some of them are so barbaric that they need to be eradicated. Hiding behind contrived shibboleths is just an excuse for moral cowardice. — Thorongil
My interests and the rights that I need to fulfil them change depending on where I am born. — Agustino
Cato's words spring from the same source as the words of those who claim that ending the oppression of certain groups (non-heteros, women etc) oppresses them. That is to say, it springs from (fear of losing) privilege. Fear of being unable to oppress.
Islam is not a homogeneous "culture". Cultures are not homogeneous either. Practices and customs within cultures are always contested. I have no problem to answer your ahistoric question: No, in principle I do not have a problem with any culture because it chooses a different social arrangement. Although, I find this ahistoric question vacuous and, therefore, any answer to it is vacuous as well. If you want to be concrete, yes, I have a problem with Iran hanging homosexuals as long as Iranian homosexuals do not like it. — Πετροκότσυφας
As for not giving examples, I've given quite a few. If you opened that article about hard-line leftist students, you would see that, since Student Unions can and do decide who comes up on a university campus, they have banned or stopped certain speakers - — Agustino
As if the above was anything but a blatant counterfactual ... We can go on pointing fingers like this all day long, but it's not gonna solve anything... — Agustino
So the ridiculous idea -- the meme being propagated by most of the rightwing noise machine right now -- is that students who protest unfair selection of speakers who attacks minorities, the poor, women as part of their rightwing agenda -- are "dangerous" to free speech by expressing their right to free speech by protesting. — Landru Guide Us
Of course the history of campuses being used by the right (and the current attempt of corporations to stifle real free speech on campuses) is something you want to distract from by claiming a handful of freedom loving students are the real problem — Landru Guide Us
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