8 ms·

> it very much stops being a good thing as soon as you bump up with laws that go against your morals A pretty explicit part of the fascist ideology per se is t

by uoaei 4y ago

> it very much stops being a good thing as soon as you bump up with laws that go against your morals A pretty explicit part of the fascist ideology per se is that laws are merely morals that are written down and enforced. The idea is that people adopt their moral code from the central government who defines how people "should" perceive the world in order to make citizens obedient to the dogma of the state. Willing fascists do everything they can to dissolve any notion of personal choice in the matter, for themselves and for others, and by their very constitution cannot conceive of morals existing outside of a system of authority.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
Wait, so does that mean the "War on Drugs" wasn't making me more free??? The US Government would never do anything fascist so obviously you're wrong.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  All laws make you less free. Laws exist to restrict freedoms in order to create a better society - what a better society means is the part where political differences come up. Most people can agree on laws existing to prevent harm unto others, but then what does that mean? Answers depend on your values and goals, and are fundamentally what politics are. The point is though, all laws make someone "less free", because the purpose of law is to prohibit.
  - js8 4y ago
    > The point is though, all laws make someone "less free", because the purpose of law is to prohibit. I think you're wrong. Not all laws prohibit. For example, take a law that establishes public libraries. It doesn't prohibit anybody from anything.
    - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
      Nah, all government is bad. Socialism is when the government spends money, freedom is when I get paid $5 an hour and eat trans fats
      - alexb_ 4y ago
        When exactly did I say that all government is bad? I personally think it's great the government restricts the right of people to commit murder.
        Spooky23 4y ago
        Why? The market would take care of it. Instead of police, just hire security.
      - jacobr1 4y ago
        This is one of the problems with polarization. The legitimate points of one side get grouped in with all the other ridiculous crap. Every law, every program has a cost. Many times this costs are worth it. And there are plenty of times where they aren't, or have unintended side-effects. Pointing out these costs and forcing society to recognize them as explicit decisions and tradeoffs is one of the key benefits of the Right, even if you disagree on where they fall on the balance of net-benefits in the final analysis. TANSTAAFL
        mason55 4y ago
        > Pointing out these costs and forcing society to recognize them as explicit decisions and tradeoffs is one of the key benefits of the Right I don't think either side is better or worse at this. It's more like, point out the costs of the other side's policies while glossing over the costs of your own. Abortion is a great example. I never hear a pro-life argument that starts out "abortion should be illegal but it will create all these unwanted babies and here's what I propose we do about that and what it will cost. We'll vote on outlawing abortion but it will be tied to tax increases to pay for programs to ensure these children have proper nutrition and education." The idea that the right cares about babies right up until the moment you're born is common enough that George Carlin was joking about it in the 70s.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - yccs27 4y ago
      The law establishing public libraries doesn‘t just say "let there be public libraries". It designates a source for funding, making it a reason that taxpayers are less free. It forces publishers to sell/give books to the libraries. If it could just exist without restricting someone‘s freedom in the wider sense, we wouldn‘t need a law.
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Right. Privately funded libraries didn't need any laws. It's even worse for authors. They pay taxes to support institutions that exist to lend out the author's books for free.
        Spooky23 4y ago
        Lol. Libraries are huge buyers of books and drive demand. Publishing wouldn’t exist without libraries. Something like 90% of book retail space has vaporized, and the ruthless consolidation makes the top 50 authors utterly dominate sales.
        giaour 4y ago
        > Privately funded libraries didn't need any laws. Not sure if this was meant to be a troll, but obviously private libraries depend on someone enforcing private ownership in general. Public libraries have some very specific legal carveouts (e.g. around protecting patron privacy) but otherwise are treated the same as private libraries, only publicly funded.
  - singleshot_ 4y ago
    What about a law that says you are entitled to a lawyer when arrested? Or a law that says if you overpay on your taxes, the government has to make you whole?
    - nevdka 4y ago
      There's the 'arrested' part and the 'taxes' part. There are limitations on the power we give the government to arrest people and to collect taxes. But the limitations are only there because of the freedom we loose in exchange for criminals being arrested and public services paid for. If there was a law that said everyone must only wear blue clothes on Wednesdays, that's taken away your freedom to choose what to wear. If there's an exception to that law that says socks can be either green or blue, that's not the law granting a new freedom to wear green socks, it's a law not taking away a freedom that existed before the blue clothing law.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    All laws make you less free, but societies without laws also make you less free. Freedom is a slippery concept.
    - janalsncm 4y ago
      This is not true at all. We have many laws which restrict the government. Many amendments do this. Or the Respect for Marriage Act as a recent example, which restricts what the government can prohibit and provides for marriage rights for people who might not otherwise have them.
  - lakecresva 4y ago
    > All laws make you less free I offer the 13th amendment (US) as a counterexample.
    - giaour 4y ago
      I mean, that does restrict private tyranny…
Karellen 4y ago
What else are laws - even in a democracy - if not "merely morals that are written down and enforced"?
- aidenn0 4y ago
  I think the difference is that the totality of morality is supposed to come from the state in Fascism. A well functioning society necessarily ought not legally forbid things that I consider immoral, which allows for personal autonomy with regards to ethics.
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    I think that would be better stated as in totalitarianism, the totality of morality is supposed to come from the state. Fascism is only one form of totalitarianism.
- uoaei 4y ago
  The issue is in the word "merely". Of course the goal of law writ large is to engender "good" conditions in a society by restricting "bad" elements and encouraging "good" ones. In this sense the law has a moral quality. Roughly speaking, "law" is morality as practiced by a state. The difference is in the acknowledgment or ignorance of the laws' congruence with the moralities of the citizens' opinions and preferences those laws are meant to represent. One could say the entire goal of democracy is the messy process of aligning the state's morality with the collective morality of its citizens. Fascism is then comparable to defining a single normative moral position and imposing it on the entire populace unilaterally. In short, the question is: whose morals?
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  Laws and morals are both normative claims about the actions of individuals, but while morals are concerned with individual actions, laws must be concerned about societal-level ramifications of not just the actions, but also the enforcement of law. For example, most people would agree that adultry is bad and immoral. But as a society we've decided that its immorality isn't sufficient to overcome the ills of being punishable by the state, and thus it ought not to be illegal. Stealing to feed your starving family is moral, but we don't want to support theft in general so its illegal. In a free society, one must recognize that legality ought loosely follow morality, with the ideal being that illegal actions are the strict subset of immoral actions which cause greater ill than the enforcement of their illegality. In the absence of an oracle into objective good and evil, a society must err on the side of not making things illegal which could potentially either be not worse than the ill of their enforcement, or not be immoral at all. The all-to-common trap is to confuse the direction of influence: morality should influence legality, never the other way around. Allowing legality to influence one's perception of morality is simply surrendering your autonomy to those who greatest influence the law, and is a sure-fire path to authoritarianism.

by uoaei 4y ago

SQueeeeeL 4y ago

Wait, so does that mean the "War on Drugs" wasn't making me more free??? The US Government would never do anything fascist so obviously you're wrong.

alexb_ 4y ago
All laws make you less free. Laws exist to restrict freedoms in order to create a better society - what a better society means is the part where political differences come up. Most people can agree on laws existing to prevent harm unto others, but then what does that mean? Answers depend on your values and goals, and are fundamentally what politics are. The point is though, all laws make someone "less free", because the purpose of law is to prohibit.
- js8 4y ago
  > The point is though, all laws make someone "less free", because the purpose of law is to prohibit. I think you're wrong. Not all laws prohibit. For example, take a law that establishes public libraries. It doesn't prohibit anybody from anything.
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    Nah, all government is bad. Socialism is when the government spends money, freedom is when I get paid $5 an hour and eat trans fats
    - alexb_ 4y ago
      When exactly did I say that all government is bad? I personally think it's great the government restricts the right of people to commit murder.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        Why? The market would take care of it. Instead of police, just hire security.
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      This is one of the problems with polarization. The legitimate points of one side get grouped in with all the other ridiculous crap. Every law, every program has a cost. Many times this costs are worth it. And there are plenty of times where they aren't, or have unintended side-effects. Pointing out these costs and forcing society to recognize them as explicit decisions and tradeoffs is one of the key benefits of the Right, even if you disagree on where they fall on the balance of net-benefits in the final analysis. TANSTAAFL
      - mason55 4y ago
        > Pointing out these costs and forcing society to recognize them as explicit decisions and tradeoffs is one of the key benefits of the Right I don't think either side is better or worse at this. It's more like, point out the costs of the other side's policies while glossing over the costs of your own. Abortion is a great example. I never hear a pro-life argument that starts out "abortion should be illegal but it will create all these unwanted babies and here's what I propose we do about that and what it will cost. We'll vote on outlawing abortion but it will be tied to tax increases to pay for programs to ensure these children have proper nutrition and education." The idea that the right cares about babies right up until the moment you're born is common enough that George Carlin was joking about it in the 70s.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yccs27 4y ago
    The law establishing public libraries doesn‘t just say "let there be public libraries". It designates a source for funding, making it a reason that taxpayers are less free. It forces publishers to sell/give books to the libraries. If it could just exist without restricting someone‘s freedom in the wider sense, we wouldn‘t need a law.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Right. Privately funded libraries didn't need any laws. It's even worse for authors. They pay taxes to support institutions that exist to lend out the author's books for free.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        Lol. Libraries are huge buyers of books and drive demand. Publishing wouldn’t exist without libraries. Something like 90% of book retail space has vaporized, and the ruthless consolidation makes the top 50 authors utterly dominate sales.
      - giaour 4y ago
        > Privately funded libraries didn't need any laws. Not sure if this was meant to be a troll, but obviously private libraries depend on someone enforcing private ownership in general. Public libraries have some very specific legal carveouts (e.g. around protecting patron privacy) but otherwise are treated the same as private libraries, only publicly funded.
- singleshot_ 4y ago
  What about a law that says you are entitled to a lawyer when arrested? Or a law that says if you overpay on your taxes, the government has to make you whole?
  - nevdka 4y ago
    There's the 'arrested' part and the 'taxes' part. There are limitations on the power we give the government to arrest people and to collect taxes. But the limitations are only there because of the freedom we loose in exchange for criminals being arrested and public services paid for. If there was a law that said everyone must only wear blue clothes on Wednesdays, that's taken away your freedom to choose what to wear. If there's an exception to that law that says socks can be either green or blue, that's not the law granting a new freedom to wear green socks, it's a law not taking away a freedom that existed before the blue clothing law.
- a4isms 4y ago
  All laws make you less free, but societies without laws also make you less free. Freedom is a slippery concept.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    This is not true at all. We have many laws which restrict the government. Many amendments do this. Or the Respect for Marriage Act as a recent example, which restricts what the government can prohibit and provides for marriage rights for people who might not otherwise have them.
- lakecresva 4y ago
  > All laws make you less free I offer the 13th amendment (US) as a counterexample.
  - giaour 4y ago
    I mean, that does restrict private tyranny…

Karellen 4y ago

What else are laws - even in a democracy - if not "merely morals that are written down and enforced"?

aidenn0 4y ago
I think the difference is that the totality of morality is supposed to come from the state in Fascism. A well functioning society necessarily ought not legally forbid things that I consider immoral, which allows for personal autonomy with regards to ethics.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  I think that would be better stated as in totalitarianism, the totality of morality is supposed to come from the state. Fascism is only one form of totalitarianism.
uoaei 4y ago
The issue is in the word "merely". Of course the goal of law writ large is to engender "good" conditions in a society by restricting "bad" elements and encouraging "good" ones. In this sense the law has a moral quality. Roughly speaking, "law" is morality as practiced by a state. The difference is in the acknowledgment or ignorance of the laws' congruence with the moralities of the citizens' opinions and preferences those laws are meant to represent. One could say the entire goal of democracy is the messy process of aligning the state's morality with the collective morality of its citizens. Fascism is then comparable to defining a single normative moral position and imposing it on the entire populace unilaterally. In short, the question is: whose morals?
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
Laws and morals are both normative claims about the actions of individuals, but while morals are concerned with individual actions, laws must be concerned about societal-level ramifications of not just the actions, but also the enforcement of law. For example, most people would agree that adultry is bad and immoral. But as a society we've decided that its immorality isn't sufficient to overcome the ills of being punishable by the state, and thus it ought not to be illegal. Stealing to feed your starving family is moral, but we don't want to support theft in general so its illegal. In a free society, one must recognize that legality ought loosely follow morality, with the ideal being that illegal actions are the strict subset of immoral actions which cause greater ill than the enforcement of their illegality. In the absence of an oracle into objective good and evil, a society must err on the side of not making things illegal which could potentially either be not worse than the ill of their enforcement, or not be immoral at all. The all-to-common trap is to confuse the direction of influence: morality should influence legality, never the other way around. Allowing legality to influence one's perception of morality is simply surrendering your autonomy to those who greatest influence the law, and is a sure-fire path to authoritarianism.