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> It does seem to me however hopelessly nihilistic. Anything willed by the majority or solving enough of a problem to garner votes is "good". I see what you me

> It does seem to me however hopelessly nihilistic. Anything willed by the majority or solving enough of a problem to garner votes is "good". I see what you mean. FWIW, I think there is good and evil, but the disagreements between individuals on which is which are so broad that in the public sector (especially for a country of hundreds of millions of folks), all we have to really fall back on is agreed-upon law as common consensus. Every person should vote their conscience, but when you ask "What is the conscience of the country," well, I have a giant legal code (of a federal level and fifty state levels) and not much else to point to that's actually shared. America is a nation of ideas, but what ideas? Kind of... All of them at the same time. To that end, I think you carry a notion that's pretty solid to keeping that nation working: with so many competing ideas overlapping, we get more stability when people enjoy the freedom to be left alone. > The last century has shown us the failure of many large, collectivist multi-cultures. I think there's wisdom in that (for the second half of the twentieth century); the challenges to multiculturalism have proven larger than the idealists assumed (many believed people would set aside their feelings, and people just don't do that; rather, many if not most of us are feelings-driven, with reason being a neat post-hoc trick we use to rationalize why we did a thing, not plan what we will do). But the previous half showed us the failure of many small, interdependent-but-separate territorial nations. We fought two world wars over that model (which is, of course, where the US also learned that sitting on our island just wasn't good enough, because if we didn't go join the fight, someone would cheerfully bring the fight to us when it got big enough. Being left alone wasn't an option; the world comes and finds you, and the historical "two big oceans" defense the US enjoyed is moot in an era of planes and ICBMs). Whatever we do with the fences, the world is smaller now than it was when most of them were put up. And doing nothing tends to just let the problems grow until they can't be ignored because they're physically bombing our land (which happened after 1941 as well). > How do you determine if a law is moral or not? This is the question you've been avoiding. You're right, because I don't think it's constructive between the two of us. We've communicated enough that I understand you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil, so discussing morality with you is in my "nope" bin. If living in this country itself hasn't convinced you of it, a rando commenter on HN sure ain't gonna. ;)

thegrimmest 4y ago
> you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil I guess because it just doesn't seem that way to me. All of us have frameworks that we use to discriminate against each other. It's an ape thing. Each difference we find is another reason for hostility. All of that is to say that it doesn't seem evil as much as stupid. Race is a superficial cosmetic feature, and only small minds give importance to superficial features. Excluding people for stupid reasons doesn't strike me as evil. Evil starts when you round them up. The point I was making that you may have missed is that I defend their right to be small minded. Largely because it's a futile thing attempt to change a small mind. There's also quite a lot of "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie. The point is we should be able to separate our personal opinions on matters from what of those opinions are appropriate to codify into law and impose on others. > But the previous half showed us the failure of many small, interdependent-but-separate territorial nations Yes, but USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here. It had enough federation to assure continuity and enough decentralization to assure continued pluralism. Had the constitutional protections enshrining this balance been a little more carefully crafted and explicitly laid out, it wouldn't have changed into the increasingly authoritarian nation we see today. > we get more stability when people enjoy the freedom to be left alone It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone. The trouble is that the system we've got doesn't go backwards. Laws don't get unmade. Government doesn't shrink. Things grow until they become unsustainable. There's not a known peaceful process to dilute authority. That's why I'm so vehemently against its concentration.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > I defend their right to be small minded. I see it and I respect your right to have that position. I disagree with it as a personal position because of how dangerous an empire is to the rest of the world (as well as itself). Americans don't have the luxury to be small-minded. Not when we sit on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. We have the liberty of not caring about what half the planet does day-to-day, but no country on Earth has the luxury of ignoring the US. If we're too dumb, people get very, very, very hurt. We owe it to humanity to be better. If it's futile to change the small-minded, then the world would be better off if this empire imploded now, as bloodlessly as possible but to no stone left atop another, because the alternatives would be oh so much worse. To every liberty, an obligation and a responsibility. > Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie Yes, some did, over 40 years ago, when people believed that ideology was dying out. Then what happened? Do we believe that would happen now? Do we believe, in hindsight, it was wise for them to do so given where we are now? > USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here It suffered a great depression and couldn't reign in the abuses of corporate power. It may have been in a goldilocks zone for a world of a specific intrinsic distribution and scale due to transport costs and time delays, but everything got smaller. How do we justify the philosophy of independent, decentralized authority when an instigator in California can convince a man in Pennsylvania to pick up a gun and kill his neighbors, or a bridge collapse in Idaho means no food in upstate New York, or one strain of one virus making human-jump in one place means total economic disruption for two years? > It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone I can't disagree. That's why (circling all the way back to the top) it would probably be best if we stopped actively persecuting trans folk and just accepted they are Americans too, with every bit as much right to describe their worldview to our children as Iowans or soccer players or jazz musicians or Irish immigrants.

thegrimmest 4y ago

> you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil I guess because it just doesn't seem that way to me. All of us have frameworks that we use to discriminate against each other. It's an ape thing. Each difference we find is another reason for hostility. All of that is to say that it doesn't seem evil as much as stupid. Race is a superficial cosmetic feature, and only small minds give importance to superficial features. Excluding people for stupid reasons doesn't strike me as evil. Evil starts when you round them up. The point I was making that you may have missed is that I defend their right to be small minded. Largely because it's a futile thing attempt to change a small mind. There's also quite a lot of "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie. The point is we should be able to separate our personal opinions on matters from what of those opinions are appropriate to codify into law and impose on others. > But the previous half showed us the failure of many small, interdependent-but-separate territorial nations Yes, but USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here. It had enough federation to assure continuity and enough decentralization to assure continued pluralism. Had the constitutional protections enshrining this balance been a little more carefully crafted and explicitly laid out, it wouldn't have changed into the increasingly authoritarian nation we see today. > we get more stability when people enjoy the freedom to be left alone It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone. The trouble is that the system we've got doesn't go backwards. Laws don't get unmade. Government doesn't shrink. Things grow until they become unsustainable. There's not a known peaceful process to dilute authority. That's why I'm so vehemently against its concentration.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> I defend their right to be small minded. I see it and I respect your right to have that position. I disagree with it as a personal position because of how dangerous an empire is to the rest of the world (as well as itself). Americans don't have the luxury to be small-minded. Not when we sit on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. We have the liberty of not caring about what half the planet does day-to-day, but no country on Earth has the luxury of ignoring the US. If we're too dumb, people get very, very, very hurt. We owe it to humanity to be better. If it's futile to change the small-minded, then the world would be better off if this empire imploded now, as bloodlessly as possible but to no stone left atop another, because the alternatives would be oh so much worse. To every liberty, an obligation and a responsibility. > Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie Yes, some did, over 40 years ago, when people believed that ideology was dying out. Then what happened? Do we believe that would happen now? Do we believe, in hindsight, it was wise for them to do so given where we are now? > USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here It suffered a great depression and couldn't reign in the abuses of corporate power. It may have been in a goldilocks zone for a world of a specific intrinsic distribution and scale due to transport costs and time delays, but everything got smaller. How do we justify the philosophy of independent, decentralized authority when an instigator in California can convince a man in Pennsylvania to pick up a gun and kill his neighbors, or a bridge collapse in Idaho means no food in upstate New York, or one strain of one virus making human-jump in one place means total economic disruption for two years? > It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone I can't disagree. That's why (circling all the way back to the top) it would probably be best if we stopped actively persecuting trans folk and just accepted they are Americans too, with every bit as much right to describe their worldview to our children as Iowans or soccer players or jazz musicians or Irish immigrants.