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Ah yeah, I recall the many famous times that fundamentalist Christians pushed for the abolition of the regimes of slavery, anti-miscegenation, Jim Crow and segr

Ah yeah, I recall the many famous times that fundamentalist Christians pushed for the abolition of the regimes of slavery, anti-miscegenation, Jim Crow and segregation. What's that? It was the liberal Federal government who did those things? Well darn, I guess the theocrats are part of the problem.

anonym29 1y ago
The liberal Federal government was also the one who legalized those practices in the first place. Slavery and racial segregation doesn't exist in nature, the legal practice of both only ever existed thanks to government having a monopopy on force. The correction was good and overdue (thank you to all of the western countries who ended slavery long before the rest of the world did), but never forget that it was governments who created the original evil in the first place. But I get it. You're fundamentally statist - no amount of state-sanctioned evil can ever convince you that the state is bad. On a related note: Free Palestine.
- arrosenberg 1y ago
  No, it was colonial monarchies that legalized those practices in the first place. You know, Kings, ordained by God. Thats not to say liberals abolished it immediately - Thomas Jefferson holds a lot of blame there, but liberal governments are the ones that did abolish it, and they are the ones that achieved the highest levels of broad civil rights in the history of civilized humanity. > But I get it. You're fundamentally statist - no amount of state-sanctioned evil can ever convince you that the state is bad. Pretty odd assumption to make. Clearly I think some types of states are bad, I'm just pitching for one specific kind. Israeli theocrats are bad too, but I get it, leftism - history is a suggestion and nothing is ever good enough.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    The specific kind of government you are pitching for is solely and directly responsible for the unjustifiable and cowardly mass murder of unarmed women and children with napalm bombs and hellfire missiles that occurred in the invasions of Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan; the "smaller" atrocities that occurred in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Syria; the Kent State massacre, the Jackson State massacre, the Orangeburg Massacre, the MOVE bombing, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, MKUltra, human radiation experiments, Guatemala STD experiments, downwinders, the agent orange epidemic, the flint water crisis, COINTELPRO, Japanese American internment, Ruby Ridge and Waco, and the ongoing widespread well-documented practice of police brutality against black and indigenous communities, and the war on drugs that has ended the lives and torn apart the families of millions of their own nonviolent citizens. Support these monsters all you want, just do yourself a favor and don't delude yourself into thinking you're on the team of the "good guys". You're on the team of psychopathic mass murderers who will brag about what they've done with a smile and a laugh. No amount of good governance can justify supporting institutions run by people who commit war crimes and grave moral atrocities with pleasure.
    - arrosenberg 1y ago
      I never said it was a perfect system or that we are morally pure, but it is the best one we have come up with so far. It has improved the human condition greatly, albeit in fits and starts. Western liberal states broadly have greater civil rights and have reduced poverty more than any other type of system in history. Your ideal (I think, you aren't very clear) of enlightened anarchism doesn't exist in any human society. Any short period of anarchy that has happened has been a shit show (i.e. France throughout the 1790s) that gets resolved by the most power hungry and murderous psychopaths possible.
      - anonym29 1y ago
        How many dead children is "the best one we have come up with so far" worth? >Western liberal states broadly have greater civil rights and have reduced poverty more than any other type of system in history Except that of China, whom by embracing markets and capitalism, lifted more people out of poverty than the entire populations of the United States and Western Europe combined. Make no mistake: Western liberalism isn't what lifts people out of poverty, capitalism does. It doesn't matter whether the capitalism is practiced by western liberal democracies or repressive authoritarian surveillance states - where capitalism goes, widespread increases in human wealth and quality of life follow. That people could confuse this cause-effect relationship merely because western liberalism adopted capitalism earlier than the more authoritarian laggards only further proves "that government which governs least, governs best". Less government = more freedom = less poverty. More government = less freedom = more poverty. Also, you're cherry-picking convenient examples while ignoring the inconvenient examples (Zapatistas, Rojava, various indigenous societies). The 1790s weren't even anarchist - they had revolutionary governments. The Terror was conducted BY a government, not in an absence of government. Anarchist societies can maintain order and capitalism can create wealth under any political system. Individuals can murder, but states are the only entities to have ever committed genocide. The question isn't whether states do good things sometimes - it's whether any amount of good can justify establishing the prerequisite conditions for genocide to occur. Is any amount of poverty reduction worth creating and maintaining the machinery that made Auschwitz possible, especially in a world where that poverty reduction doesn't actually require the existence of that machinery to begin with? Keeping the state around for the stated purpose of reducing poverty is like keeping a loaded gun in a daycare to open juice boxes. Sure you can do it that way, but you also do not need the gun to do that, and having the gun there just introduces massive unnecessary risks.

anonym29 1y ago

The liberal Federal government was also the one who legalized those practices in the first place. Slavery and racial segregation doesn't exist in nature, the legal practice of both only ever existed thanks to government having a monopopy on force. The correction was good and overdue (thank you to all of the western countries who ended slavery long before the rest of the world did), but never forget that it was governments who created the original evil in the first place. But I get it. You're fundamentally statist - no amount of state-sanctioned evil can ever convince you that the state is bad. On a related note: Free Palestine.

arrosenberg 1y ago
No, it was colonial monarchies that legalized those practices in the first place. You know, Kings, ordained by God. Thats not to say liberals abolished it immediately - Thomas Jefferson holds a lot of blame there, but liberal governments are the ones that did abolish it, and they are the ones that achieved the highest levels of broad civil rights in the history of civilized humanity. > But I get it. You're fundamentally statist - no amount of state-sanctioned evil can ever convince you that the state is bad. Pretty odd assumption to make. Clearly I think some types of states are bad, I'm just pitching for one specific kind. Israeli theocrats are bad too, but I get it, leftism - history is a suggestion and nothing is ever good enough.
- anonym29 1y ago
  The specific kind of government you are pitching for is solely and directly responsible for the unjustifiable and cowardly mass murder of unarmed women and children with napalm bombs and hellfire missiles that occurred in the invasions of Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan; the "smaller" atrocities that occurred in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Syria; the Kent State massacre, the Jackson State massacre, the Orangeburg Massacre, the MOVE bombing, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, MKUltra, human radiation experiments, Guatemala STD experiments, downwinders, the agent orange epidemic, the flint water crisis, COINTELPRO, Japanese American internment, Ruby Ridge and Waco, and the ongoing widespread well-documented practice of police brutality against black and indigenous communities, and the war on drugs that has ended the lives and torn apart the families of millions of their own nonviolent citizens. Support these monsters all you want, just do yourself a favor and don't delude yourself into thinking you're on the team of the "good guys". You're on the team of psychopathic mass murderers who will brag about what they've done with a smile and a laugh. No amount of good governance can justify supporting institutions run by people who commit war crimes and grave moral atrocities with pleasure.
  - arrosenberg 1y ago
    I never said it was a perfect system or that we are morally pure, but it is the best one we have come up with so far. It has improved the human condition greatly, albeit in fits and starts. Western liberal states broadly have greater civil rights and have reduced poverty more than any other type of system in history. Your ideal (I think, you aren't very clear) of enlightened anarchism doesn't exist in any human society. Any short period of anarchy that has happened has been a shit show (i.e. France throughout the 1790s) that gets resolved by the most power hungry and murderous psychopaths possible.
    - anonym29 1y ago
      How many dead children is "the best one we have come up with so far" worth? >Western liberal states broadly have greater civil rights and have reduced poverty more than any other type of system in history Except that of China, whom by embracing markets and capitalism, lifted more people out of poverty than the entire populations of the United States and Western Europe combined. Make no mistake: Western liberalism isn't what lifts people out of poverty, capitalism does. It doesn't matter whether the capitalism is practiced by western liberal democracies or repressive authoritarian surveillance states - where capitalism goes, widespread increases in human wealth and quality of life follow. That people could confuse this cause-effect relationship merely because western liberalism adopted capitalism earlier than the more authoritarian laggards only further proves "that government which governs least, governs best". Less government = more freedom = less poverty. More government = less freedom = more poverty. Also, you're cherry-picking convenient examples while ignoring the inconvenient examples (Zapatistas, Rojava, various indigenous societies). The 1790s weren't even anarchist - they had revolutionary governments. The Terror was conducted BY a government, not in an absence of government. Anarchist societies can maintain order and capitalism can create wealth under any political system. Individuals can murder, but states are the only entities to have ever committed genocide. The question isn't whether states do good things sometimes - it's whether any amount of good can justify establishing the prerequisite conditions for genocide to occur. Is any amount of poverty reduction worth creating and maintaining the machinery that made Auschwitz possible, especially in a world where that poverty reduction doesn't actually require the existence of that machinery to begin with? Keeping the state around for the stated purpose of reducing poverty is like keeping a loaded gun in a daycare to open juice boxes. Sure you can do it that way, but you also do not need the gun to do that, and having the gun there just introduces massive unnecessary risks.