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The constitution is not a suicide pact.

trentnix 7y ago
If history is any indicator, forcing people to live according to the whims of Others results in death and destruction. The coercive power required to get people to behave and the inevitable blowback that occurs when people are unable to govern themselves will result in a lot of both. Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem.
- Angostura 7y ago
  > Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem. The thing about democracy is that not everyone has to like everything - just the majority. I don't like that I'm going to have to change my lifestyle, in order to prevent appalling environmental damage, but I understand that I will have to. The "big problem" is the kind of people who describe pragmatic evidence-based policies designed to avoid collapse of civilisation as "an environmental jihad"
- naturlich 7y ago
  The alternative is to do nothing and that will result in death and destruction. If the ability to harm the environment and other people is a freedom people are up in arms about losing, it's a shitty freedom to have in the first place. One person's freedom should not impinge on others'. Given the choice between the state taking away coal or mass extinction, I'm choosing the former.
usrusr 7y ago
It surely wasn't intended as a suicide pact, but an interpretation that puts personal liberties on a higher pedestal than survival-grade commons could easily make it one.
- primroot 7y ago
  I share your position, but it is unfortunate that the word personal is prompt to such semantic abuse nowadays. It is not personal liberty that is being preached, it is property liberty. Liberty bestowed not based on the unchanging measure of human personhood, but upon the measure of property ownership. The richer, the "liberior." A cult of the status quo in traditional service of the powerful, hiding its old age by dispensing the righteous aspiration among underdogs of becoming a great owner. And great property depends on a greatly powerful government (as Adam Smith claims when talking about the tasks of government in Wealth of Nations). Hence it is ultimately tyranny what they preach.

If history is any indicator, forcing people to live according to the whims of Others results in death and destruction. The coercive power required to get people to behave and the inevitable blowback that occurs when people are unable to govern themselves will result in a lot of both. Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem.

Angostura 7y ago
> Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem. The thing about democracy is that not everyone has to like everything - just the majority. I don't like that I'm going to have to change my lifestyle, in order to prevent appalling environmental damage, but I understand that I will have to. The "big problem" is the kind of people who describe pragmatic evidence-based policies designed to avoid collapse of civilisation as "an environmental jihad"
naturlich 7y ago
The alternative is to do nothing and that will result in death and destruction. If the ability to harm the environment and other people is a freedom people are up in arms about losing, it's a shitty freedom to have in the first place. One person's freedom should not impinge on others'. Given the choice between the state taking away coal or mass extinction, I'm choosing the former.

usrusr 7y ago

It surely wasn't intended as a suicide pact, but an interpretation that puts personal liberties on a higher pedestal than survival-grade commons could easily make it one.

primroot 7y ago
I share your position, but it is unfortunate that the word personal is prompt to such semantic abuse nowadays. It is not personal liberty that is being preached, it is property liberty. Liberty bestowed not based on the unchanging measure of human personhood, but upon the measure of property ownership. The richer, the "liberior." A cult of the status quo in traditional service of the powerful, hiding its old age by dispensing the righteous aspiration among underdogs of becoming a great owner. And great property depends on a greatly powerful government (as Adam Smith claims when talking about the tasks of government in Wealth of Nations). Hence it is ultimately tyranny what they preach.