I must say I adhere to this definition of liberal.

That’s a cool definition of liberal. Although I’m not sure “progressive” would not fit that definition better. Can you point to a more expansive discussion of this definition? Can you suggest where we might see a pole that suggests that people who identify themselves as liberal agree with this?

Look, I ‘m not saying you’re wrong, I’ simply saying that the labels liberal and conservative are too encompassing. When the congress wanted to modify the way welfare was run in this country was it the Liberals or conservative who were “challenging prevailing attitudes”? We can argue who was right, but saying that conservatives were fighting for the status quo while liberals were fighting for changes is simply silly.

I think Jackmannii said it best: “Forget the labels. They don’t work.”

Essentially, I’m saying these are emergency situations. :wink:

My house is and I didn’t cause that destruction either.

If the cause of hunger is that your livelihood was taken away from you by causes not reasonably in your control, then we take on that fiscal responsibility.

Of course the government will back up any collection with force! That’s silly. What you said was that I was forcing you to give me money. I’m not doing anything, nor would I be in the scheme I mention.

It seems to me that you are willing to assign fiscal responsibility without a causal agent to arbitrary parties. So am I, except I stress the plural of “arbitrary parties.” :wink:

Then I think you’re reading more into it than is there. My life is not in a state of emergency due to agencies outside of my control. It might not be the best life, but it isn’t so bad that I’m on the verge of bankruptcy (ooh, those naughty tyrranical people, releasing debts like that! ;)), losing my house, being out of a place to live, or out of food to eat. So what claim do I hold over you? The point is that people can fall low enough due to no fault of their own that they cannot even sustain a minimum of healthy existence. They might be willing to work for it, but who would know? No bank account without an address, no work, and so without a work and account, where can they get a residence from? Maybe I tried working but the jobs in the area don’t support single individuals (in especially expensive areas this is actually plausible). Maybe maybe maybe… I don’t know that I can list all the things that can happen in “normal” life to cause “emergency” situations. I think you should reconsider what an emergency is, and what characterizes them.

Which is a great justification for making sure stealing and robbery are illegal. But that’s not a concern here.

You tell me. A storm comes through, knocks a tree down, and damages your roof. Should the roofer do it for free? Why the hell does he have a right to any of your money since he isn’t responsible for the damage? He isn’t causally responsible for the storm! He doesn’t deserve one red cent!

Well, I find a great many decisions in life to have absolutely piss-all to do with morality, to tell you the truth. I don’t think every statement is really a question just because I can say, “…you know?” at the end of every one. (“Two plus two equals four, you know?”) I see a great many things that have to be done in order for humans to survive in whatever form society currently takes. One of these is driving on one side of the road or another in order to minimize accidents. Of course the government can enforce this, they enforce all laws. I don’t see why we must reduce every situation to a moral one. Perhaps that’s another thread.

It only requires that there are events outside of everyone’s control that could reduce them to starvation. Likelihood has nothing to do with it. I still have to get insurance even if I’m a good driver.

Huh? Did we somehow slip into the realm of a blank check where the homeless guy starts buying plasma TVs and the rest of us duped saps can’t lift a finger to stop it?

I’m not reducing life to fiscal expenditures, except in the context of poverty which, of course, has much to do with money. Or a lack thereof.

No credit for building monetary assets? Whoa! I’m asking every single american to make sure people are able to make it on their own in case they fall below the flat level of survival, not to support anyone at all for an unlimited period of time and to any arbitrary level.

In the world I see, I am not a self-made man. I have some intelligence and talent, but it was the society I lived in that enabled me to make my own life with it. I don’t owe anyone anything, it is true: what I’ve worked for is mine. But that can be taken away at any moment by an earthquake or by a downturn in the economy because a few businesses were cooking the books. Where is my self-made wealth then? Didn’t I do everything right? Why can I lose it all if it is mine?

None of it. But it is also true that if it weren’t for the rest of you, I wouldn’t have any of it, either. So what does that tell us about wealth?

Of course. As I admitted earlier, the default person fiscal responsibility will fall on in situations they didn’t cause is the person the tragedy befell.

But just because I am forced by nature to address the fiscal responsibility still doesn’t make it mine. As a rule, I assign fiscal responsibility to causal responsibility when it is there, and to the people most likely to be able to handle it when it isn’t there. There is no blank check. There is no unlimited claim on private property. There is a distribution of fiscal responsibility when the market that usually handles such things inherently cannot do so. Charity works outside of this market, as does redistribution of wealth in such cases. When the market does its job, great! I like it when people make their own way. Unfortunately not everyone can, and for reasons outside themselves. In these cases the economic burden should be placed on those that can handle it rather than those that cannot.

I’m only going to respond to a couple now. I’ll read the rest later.

Well, no, the hunger is caused by the fact that I did not eat today combined with the fact that I am still alive. I never claimed to have had a livlihood. How does your philosophy apply?

If I hire a gang to rob you I have not done anything. If vote for a gang to rob you I have done less. How are these different from the case where I rob you morally?

AAAAAH! you are the one claiming that others should pay to fix the roof. I am claiming that the roofer will fix it (if and only if he agrees) and that I will pay him for it. Please don’t imply that I am taking part in any of your philosophy.

Yes. The operative word being your house.

Seriously, the rest of your post seems to hint that there are limits to what a destitute person can expect from society. But what in your philosophy of “not his fault, not his bill” limits this help? You can ignore all the rest of the debate if you can form a coherent answer to this one.

I missed this before. If we start here, maybe we can make more progres.

Well, this may be your mistake. Yes it does. You are responsible for yourself. There may be situations in which you can recoup such losses. Some of these situations may not be causally linked. Welfare or other forms of charity for instance. Others are causally linked. When someone else causes the damage, for instance. As long as force is not used in the first case I have no problem. I also do not have a problem when force is used in the second case.

How do you reconcile these claims. They are mutually exclusive. Unless you put some limit on your first statement like “I assign fiscal … up to a reasonable limit”. But your philosophy does not seem to have any such limit. If most of the people in our society except you and I lose their jobs we are on the hook. What’s more, the rest of society is justified (in your scheme) in holding a whip over us to make sure we perform.

Look, Let me state again. I do not have problems with helping people who need help. I do it all the time. I would certainly do more of it If I had more money. I don’t even mind using large centeralized agencies (government) to distribute this money. But I object to any suggestion that I owe such aid to anyone.

I can debate the proposition that “a person should be free from force” because my belief system is relative rather than absolute. Nothing is imposed upon me from above or outside, it’s all up to me. Thus when I find better beliefs my belief structure allows me to adopt them without a hitch. I don’t think people should always be free from force. I am perfectly OK with forcing people to obey the laws because I am willing to obey them myself or accept the consequences for not doing so.

I was oversimplifying a bit by implying that your belief system isn’t amenable to reason. It’s just that the reasoning it allows seems simplified in the extreme: “People should be free from force because they have a right to be free from force. Why? Because they do.” And that’s the end of it. I’m not trying to misrepresent your beliefs or anything. If I am wrong then just explain why.

I didn’t call your beliefs unreasonable. I implied, wrongly as noted above, that they didn’t support reason. I’m sorry for the mistake. I wasn’t trying to insult you. I have never claimed to respect all others either. I respect other opinions in the sense of admiting that they are of equal validity as those I hold but in other respects I don’t respect them at all. I feel perfectly justified in ridiculing racial stereotypes for instance and can be downright disrespectful to bigots who go around spreading them. While I understand intellectually that these ideas are no less valid than my opinion that everyone is equal I know that such crap has caused mountains of misery and emotionally I reject them utterly.

I have read such threads. My point is that the conception of such rights, that they exist independent of our wishes and desires, doesn’t lend itself to give and take. Sure you and another believer in absolute rights could discuss your individual ideas of which “natural rights” exist but to what end? They exist. You can’t see that another’s point of view is better and change your rights can you? Because they aren’t dependent upon your opinion of them. They just are.

Gravity is an observable phenomenon. It’s fact not opinion. ( Assuming we share the same opinion of what constitutes a fact. ) If you are right and these rights you talk about do exist then they are fact as well. The arbitrariness is in the individual opinions of which rights exist. A person can believe in whatever rights best serve their needs. If they want to believe that rape is OK they can just believe in a right to rape.

:: looks around fearfully for villagers with torches and pitchforks ::

We aren’t talking about lynching. We are talking about government. You would have government enforce your opinion even though even though most people disagree with you. Why should the government give more weight to your opinion than that of everyone else?

Do you think government should enforce a law to enslave you if everyone else voted for it except you? If not then it seems to me that you are willing to set yourself up as the sole arbiter of government. Am I wrong?

2sense I think we are not as far apart on this as I first thought. When you said you thought all opinions are valid I thought you were suggesting that all opinions were equally true. Perhaps you simply meant that everyone has a right to hold whatever opinion he wants? In which case I agree with you.

I think maybe we agree here as well. As long as we agree (and I think we do) that believing in a right to rape is not a license to rape.

I’m not at all sure what it is about rights which exist that are not amenable to give and take. True, we cannot change the fact that a right exists (or not), but we can surely debate and discuss our understanding of it. We can certainly change our opinion on which rights exists or apply to a given situation.

And if the mob stopped to take a vote would that make the lynching ok? Many arrests and even some lynchings that took place in our history were done with full legal authority. The jim crow laws were all instituted while observing every legal ritual. IOW They were the government. Does this make them less immoral? Your philosophy says yes. Mine says no. Mine allowed the federal government to overturn those laws against the wishes of the majority. Yours simply would have accepted the will of the majority.

Yes, you are wrong. If everyone else voted to enslave me (or you for that matter) I would not accept the result of the vote. This would constitute a situation which makes it “necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another”. I would suggest that you and I (in the case that everyone but us voted to enslave us) form a new nation to “secure these Rights” that “WE hold … to be self-evident”.
Specifically, I would fight resisting the idea that anyone has the right to enslave me or you.

I tried to put together a simple explanation,but it all amounts to the right to life as a rational animal implies a reght to be free from force.You might want to look through this essay. I’m not sure I agree with everything in it, and it does not address the issue in the same terms we have been using, but it gives a more detailed explanation of “natural rights”.

OK, I 'm off to read Atlas Shrugged again:)

I’d like to examin the use of “arbitrary”.

Well, I am not assigning responsibility arbitrarily. Although I agree you are ;).

But what is this level? Without a moral reason to assign it, how will you avoid doing so arbitrarily? And I’ve asked this befroe, so if you answered it already ignore this one, but if this level is arbitrary, how is that not a blank check? Further, if it is arbitrary, why not simply say that minimum level is $10 a week? Or $1 a month?

Godfuckingdammit! I posted something long here last night and SAW IT POSTED…now it’s not here…WTF? I know, take it to the mods…

Here’s a link that may be germane to the topic: Christian fundamentalist goes apeshit over suggestion that Jesus was a liberal.

I thought the reply was particularly deft and articulate, definitely worthy of the SDMB.

Not sure that link is working:

http://www.adventuretravelinc.net/~trowbridge/liberal.htm

pervert, let’s back of a bit so I don’t fall back into vivisection by vB code. I think it might be best to pick up here:

Ah, we merely haven’t gotten to what limits are reasonable for me yet. It’s the crucial point, and I have alluded to it in a line or two by suggesting we understand “emergency” (and not limit it only to natural disasters). Two things concern me the most. One is whether the person can pay for what happened (assuming we’re talking about things outside their control again). If so, then they should do so. However, if they cannot, then this becomes a state of emergency for them. Their life itself is in jeapordy. I find it unacceptable to continue to insist that just because it is associated with their needs that it continues to be their burden. They cannot handle such a burden, it is clear. In these cases, the government should indeed redistribute the burden so that it can be taken care of to remove the emergency state. So the second thing that concerns me is: how do we redistribute the burden? It is already unfair for the individual in question, and it will be unfair if we dump the burden on anyone else—even if they can afford it. In this case, then, we would seek to minimize the strain it would have on those who can pay. We do this by spreading the burden out as much as possible. Such a mechanism already exists: taxation.

For me the sticking point in liberalism is the lack of freedom. Pause… 1 2 3. By that I mean the freedom to fail. It is directly related to the responsibility to take care of oneself.

I am forced, at the point of a gun, to contribute money to someone who is not required to reciprocate in any way. That is a form of economic slavery. Gets my shorts all bunched up. That’s why I’m not a Liberal.

OK, but again, what is the limit. If society is allowed to use force to obtain the resources from those who produce them in order to give them to those who need them, what if the need is burdensome on the producers. We pay around 50% of our income to taxes in America. :wink:According to the CBO number I looked up here (assuming my math is correct) Entitlement spending account for just over half of the federal budget of 2002. I know you want to claim that taxes distribute the burden, and I agree they do. They distribute the burden for non producers onto the backs of producers. The question is what is the limit under your philosophy? Would a tax rate of 60% be too much? 80%? 110%?

I realize you don’t ussualy think of budgets this way, that’s what started the whole liberal tax and spend discussion in this thread (not you personally of course).

See, I think you would agree that when an individual is considering charity it is perfectly ok for him to take into account what he can afford. In fact You might even agree that it would be irresponsible for him not to take affordability into account. But somehow this never gets translated into the thinking on social security spending.

Let me propose that we cap social spending at 10% of GDP. The federal and state governments easily control that much of our economy. They could simply set asside money from each years budget for emergencies, disabilities, and all the other things we have been talking about. We could argue about the cap (5% or 25%). But we would limit the spending without destroying the safety net. The fact of the matter, is that we cannot spend more than 100% no matter how noble the goal might be. And it has to be admitted that spending on this sort of thing is definately a drain on the economy. So, given that we have to have a limit why is the discussion of limits so offensive? All I’m suggesting is that destitute people are not “entitled” to take money by force. And given that we don’t have an unlimited amount of money, we should be able to discuss limits on this sort of spending without resorting to “you guys don’t care” arguments.

perv:

My back of the envelope calculation says 10% of GDP is about what we spend now. GDP ~ $10T. Fed Budget ~ $2T, with about 1/2 going to social spending. That’s about 10%. If your desire is to reduce spending, you need to go much lower.

I’m not as interested in reducing spending as I am in applying limits. The way the laws are instituted now there are none. Whats worse, the way the debate runs now we only talk about who needs, why they need and who does not need (implying that this catagory should provide the needs of the others). What I’m really after is defining these limits.

And while we are at it, your right the 2002 numbers put “Entitlements and Other Mandatory Spending” at 11.6%. I do think this is too high, but its probably not completely out of the ball park.

perv:
And that’s just the federal gov’t expenditures. I might easily argue that the federal spending on social programs should be zero. I think the best way to control spending is to drive it down to the most local level possible. With a few rare exceptions, I don’t think there is a single social program that could not be managed by the states. In addition to being easier to manage (ie, avoid mismanagement) allowing the states to be the primary spenders on social programs allows us to try 50 different methods and better determine what works and what doesn’t.

I tend to agree that localization is a good thing. I liked the reforms in the 90s which moved much of the money directly to the states (at least it intended to). Speaking of which, I’m not sure how much of that federal money is not actually spent by the states. I do like the idea of different localities being able to taylor the sytem to their needs. As bad as our education system is, I’ve always thought that centeralizing it would have a very bad effect.

There is the problem of resources, of course. Poorer states being the most needy and least able, that is.

<Am I now taking the liberal position?;)>

What do you feel is a reasonable limit? Do I look like a single-handed policy-maker? :wink: Honestly, the idea is that lives in a state of emergency aren’t limited to something like a tornado. There are man-made disasters as well as natural ones, and I find it the height of, well, I don’t want to mince words… but I find it ridiculous to pay attention to one and ignore the other.

As opposed to bailing out companies? As opposed to building and maintaining roads? I’m beginning to wonder just how much you think the government already does that is bad. Maybe you don’t have a problem with liberalism, but with any government not run on charity. Perhaps we should turn around and understand where you draw the line in terms of the government’s use of force. Because I think I’ve pretty much made my case, honestly.

The problem, (obviosly, its the problem I have, not a logical or objective problem) erislover, is that you define the obligation without defining its limits. I’m not talking about defining all of the possible emergencies. I think we agree on most of them. I’m talking about defining a limit on the amount of aid that any (or even all) of these emergencies obligates the rest of us to provide. I’m not even asking for a firm number. I’d settle for something like a percentage of GDP. Or perhaps some formula like “you can tax wealthy people only to the point that they become X time the poverty line” or something like that. The way I read your philosophy, it sounds like taxation to care for others could in and of itself become an “emergency”.

And just so I am clear, I think bailing out companies is at least as reprehensible as bailing out individuals.

** It’s not that simple. First off, when I say someone has a right to their own opinion I don’t mean it in the same way that you do. I am making an observation of an observable phenomenon. In America we do have the right to believe as we wish but that right can be taken away. If, for instance, a law outlawing atheism were enacted and enforced then our right to our own opinion would be gone. We would only have the right to have the “right” opinions. For me rights are relative or if you prefer: alienable. I see a right as something that exists or does not. For me there is no moral dimension, that is- when I say you have a right to your own opinions I am not stating a preference. I’m not saying you deserve that right. ( Though of course I agree that you do. )

And as for all opinions being equally true… perhaps they are in some philosophical way. Perhaps from an omniscient point of view all opinions are equally true or somehow equally false. I dunno. Ask eris, he knows much more about philosophy that I. Perhaps, as I suspect, there is an objective reality and some opinions are true and all others are not. I don’t know because I have to live my life from a subjective frame of reference. From where I stand I can’t tell if they are all true or not. So when I say that all opinions are valid I guess I really mean that I can’t prove that they are either true or false. Obviously to live my life I have to make decisions so I hypothesize that some opinions, my opinions, are true. Some of my beliefs are so strong that while I understand intellectually that I don’t know they are absolutely true emotionally I can’t avoid feeling they are Truth. So basically I try keep an open mind and not reject opposing ideas out of hand. I’m liberal.

Agreed.

This I don’t get. How can a believer in absolute rights be convinced to change their mind about which rights exist? I mean, suppose some clever fellow comes along and outlined a set of natural rights that they find more appealing than those they currently hold. How can the person adopt the new beliefs and still maintain their integrity? I mean, this reminds me of the weakminded argument that a person should believe in God because they will find it comforting. Whether an individual feels better or not doesn’t change the nature of the world around us. Reality doesn’t conform to our preferences does it? I certainly don’t believe that it does.

Lynchings aren’t legal. When the government sanctions a killing that is an “execution”. Sure lynchings were public and often law enforcement officials were directly involved and sometimes they were even advertised in newspapers in advance but that doesn’t make them legal. They aren’t. Sometimes you will see the term “extralegal” used to denote actions which are outside the law but are publicly accepted nonetheless. Jim Crow is another story. Those were actual laws. Often they were enforced by extralegal means but they themselves did not constitute lynching. Nor have I ever said that legal = moral. Legal or no, racial subjugation is an atrocity.

You are avoiding the question. I didn’t ask if you would obey a law enslaving you. I wouldn’t either. The question is whether you think the government should enforce such a law. I think that if it were popularly enacted then the government should. What do you think?