Saf wrote:Counter-Corporate Jujitsu wrote:The mass murderer could be kicked out of the society to which he belonged.
Now you have made it true that ANYONE can be removed forcibly from their home and society. Because you have allowed this exception, you have chosen to do away with the rule that says people will not be forced to become refugees, so anyone can be kicked out of their society. There may be laws preventing it, but it's perfectly ethical to force someone out of an area.
This is why, instead of beginning from absolute ethical principles of government, such as "rights", governments (and in democratic governments, the people) must base their laws around general societal goals and rules-systems which promote them.
For instance, because we want the vast majority of citizens to survive, we create laws that will promote the general survival of those citizens-- even if those laws themselves do not protect every citizen, or even if those laws themselves call for the deaths of a small subset of citizens. (For instance, to use a logical example, calling for the deaths of those that kill other cititzens.)
Because we do not wish to endure what we label "oppression", we create systems of laws which do not allow certain acts which we label "oppressive"-- essentially, we create governments based around the principles of the liberal thinkers of the 18th century. That they phrased their ideals in the absolutist language of God-given human rights is unfortunate; in order to reconcile the impossibility of universal respect for the rights to life, liberty, and property, we make them conditional-- which means we invalidate them in certain cases, without discussing why or when it is acceptable to do so.
This leaves us in an untenable position: we violate some peoples' rights, by necessity, but we cannot explain why this is acceptable by the terms of our governing principles. This gives us no logical ground to argue for or against some new law, which would, by necessity, violate the rights of some individuals, because we can only default to one of two mutually exclusive (and irrational) positions; we either cannot violate the rights of some citizens, despite the fact that we do so in other situations, or we can violate the rights of those citizens, despite the fact that those rights are moral absolutes.
Saf wrote:Imagine (suspend your disbelief) a person who has never seen, heard of, worn nor owned a pair of shoes. This person, one day, hears of this great invention of shoes, and learns a little bit about it: you buy them in pairs, they go on your feet, and there are different kinds. They really know little about shoes.
Now, let's say this person is a lowly peasant who needs a sturdy pair of shoes for his work in the countryside. If he goes to see the shoe salesmen, each will try to sell him a shoe: "Buy this Nike running shoe, it's the best - I'm a shoe salesman, and I know what I'm talking about!" "No, buy these Timberland boots: they're perfectly suited for the out of doors." "Friend, you need this pair of sandals. They're comfortable and stylish - the perfect shoes!"
Having never owned shoes, the man might think, "Hmm, I bet those sandals are nice. The man trying to get me to buy them was the most convincing." Thus, he buys sandals, but they are ill-suited to the task at hand.
In this example, you have detailed how the same professionals, which you say we should rely upon, have either intentionally misled this man, or have sold him the wrong shoes out of ignorance of his condition. In either case, they have done so in favor of their own best interests-- selling him shoes from their own stock.
How is his plight lessened by taking another shoe professional, who will likewise have his own interests, and having him decide for the peasant which shoes to buy? By what special virtue is he any more knowledgeable of the peasant's footwear needs (since the other salesmen know shoes as well as he does), or any more impartial than they are?
You have not, in your analogy, demonstrated in any fashion how restricting shoe-purchasing decisions to shoe professionals will make certain that each person has the shoes ideally suited to their needs; at best, your system would ensure that every person would own and wear the shoes best suited to the needs of shoe salesmen.
And that is assuming that shoe professionals are unfailingly honest and well-intentioned-- which your own example argues against.
Saf wrote:Because I know I support the idea of a welfare state, I know to vote for left-leaning candidates. But because ~50% of Americans think that Iraq caused 9/11, the right to vote must not be given out freely.
This is an example of a perversion of the society that our liberal forefathers attempted to form. They knew that their ideal society required well-educated and well-informed citizens in order to function, and made efforts to ensure that society would be well-educated and well-informed. (Both public schooling and the right of the free press are oriented toward that goal.)
However, and unfortunately, a well-educated and well-informed citizenry is a headache for any ruling class, who will, at times, seek to promote their own welfare over that of the whole. Over time, they've worked to erode the efficacy of both the schools and the media, until such grotesque parodies of the well-informed citizenry as your quoted statistic became possible.
The solution is not to remove the ignorant from the governing process, as that would only reinforce the position of the people who have created the ignorant; it would give them an even smaller constituency that they must please to retain power, and by gradually corrupting the new system, they will even gain the power to handpick that constituency.
This system would only serve to reduce the accountability of those in power-- which when coupled with the reduction in restrictions against government power would mean that they have more power with less responsibility. That, as history tells us repeatedly, is a recipe for societal distaster.
Saf wrote:(NOTE: I hate not backing my sources - I don't know if that's the exact percentage, and I don't know where I heard it. If anyone else has heard of this statistic/can back it up, please let me know!)
Don't worry. I would rather argue against the principle of your argument than the specific support-- I can acknowledge the ignorance of the voting public without worrying about the exact measure of their ignorance on that specific topic.