Glen sed:
I would say that many liberals would be willing to risk a few murderers
and rapists be left on the loose to avoid hanging even *one* innocent
person, while most conservatives (and libertarians?) would be willing to
risk hanging a few innocent persons (as long as they don't look too
much like themselves) to avoid allowing anyone to go unpunished for
their sins.
The conversation will remain hopelessly befuddled as long as nobody
makes an effort to define "right" vs. "left".
The conversation will remain wonderfully befuddled, period... it is what
conversations are?
That said, I don't think any single axis (or really any presumed
collection of orthogonal axes) really models things well enough to avoid
befuddlement.
Left and Right have a very specific vintage if not archaic meaning from
the French Parliament: The Left side of the Parliamentary chambers
being populated with those promoting "Movement" and the Right side
populated with those promoting "Order".
In our co-option of the term (by "our" I mean generally the public
discourse on contemporary American Politics), much is distorted and
swept under the carpet. There are many sub-factions of "Left" and of
"Right". The simple dichotomy is a fiction.
Roger tried to do so in
his Altemeyer posts. And I tried a different one in my Ukraine vs. US
parties post awhile back. But those are incomplete efforts.
There are an infinitude of hairs to be split in this domain...
For example, if we define "right" to mean no intentional market
design/interference and "left" as government designed markets, then
we're lead to some answers to these questions. But if we define "right"
to mean status quo inertia and "left" to mean something like "change for
the sake of change", then we're lead to different answers.
the original French sense of the term roughly...
From my perspective (as a libertarian who can't call himself libertarian
anymore because that word has been hijacked by morons), no libertarian
would ever risk a government sponsored hanging of an innocent person.
Yes... a lynch mob (possibly of one) is always preferable to
Libertarians. I'm roughly in your camp Glen, as we've discussed...
but most card-carrying Libertarians *would* risk personally assasinating
an innocent person or being party to a lynchmob who did the same... and
*that* is why I can't "hang" with them. Revenge might be sweet, but it
is not Justice and often lowers everyone to the lowest level. Just look
at much of our reaction to 9/11... I'm not sure it made us "a better
people" for the most part. exhibit A: Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo;
exhibit B: Pakistan, Yemen, Syria.
We libertarians would much rather all criminals were set free to be
handled by the implicit, systemic checks and balances of an undesigned
society. In other words, if they're really a bad person, then they'll
eventually have a run-in with another person who decides they're an
@ssh0l3 and simply kills the jerk.
I have anarcho-primitivist tendencies that align well with this mode,
and in fact may even trump your garden-variety Libertarian... but ...
I also live within a society who does have an existing order that almost
work... and I'm not interested in spending my life tearing it down so I
can figure out if my romantic fantasies of a purely anarchistic milieu
is viable. I'm more for aspects of the status quo than I like to admit.
I tend to think there's quite a bit of affinity with this perspective
amongst most "right" leaning people I know, as well, even if they're not
libertarian ... hence the tendency to cling to our guns (the means for
implicit checks and balances) and religion (the justification for those
checks and balances). "Of course, Jesus would want me to shoot that guy."
If I were a gun nut, I'd cling to my gun a lot harder than I'd cling to
my *right* to collect an arsenal of military grade weaponry and
ammunition and to "open carry" into places where I *know* it will scare
and offend people. But that's just me... I don't think I'm your garden
variety gun nut. I know plenty of people with a hoard I can go
appropriate if I think I need guns, and I'll bet you I can appropriate
them with less blunt-force-trauma methods than armed invasion.
From a different perspective, actual libertarians are completely willing
to admit that life isn't fair.
The ones I know, seem to almost revel in it... in fact, I guess I do
myself. Life is wonderfully messy. Now, let's go lynch someone!
Plenty of people who earned stuff failed
to retain that stuff or were never properly rewarded for their efforts.
That's just how it all works! You not only have to be creative and
_useful_. You also have to be willing to kick @ss and TAKE your share
... even if you sometimes take too much or too little.
And in fact, I just realized the biggest fallacy in the left/right
(up/down, red/blue, yank/reb, this/that) debate is that it almost always
degenerates to two things: Ownership of Property (real, fiat, chattel)
and the Right to try to take *other's* rights away.
I suppose I just talked myself right up my own tailpipe here (as if
*that* never happens) and realized that I'm really not interested in
politics except for the way it tweaks my morbid fascination...
I'm truly more interested in community and what motivates people, and
what makes life worth living... having my cold dead hand pried from my
gun... demanding that a doctor or a community give me an abortion when
it goes against their personal principles... or demanding that a
clergyman or magistrate "bless" my sexual union with *whomever* I have
chosen to union with sexually, whether they approve of it or not (how do
you bless something you don't approve of?)... or taking from the
rich/poor to give to the poor/rich really just doesn't do it for me...
So, based on these two scenarios, I think it's safe to assume that
libertarians (as I define the term) don't even play this "fair play"
game. That aphorism is meaningless to us. A better aphorism is "He who
has the gold rules."
I'd say "he who has the gold should become King Midas and leave the rest
of us alone to seek and pursue love and right livelihood among our
friends and families"
Ok... I guess I'm in a mood... must be the longer days...
- Steve
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
