littlegreenpills posted:if the union had no problem with preserving slavery why was the missouri compromise repealed
i actually dont know very much about tha civil war 
libelous_slander posted:what i dont get is the argument sounds like an attempt to engage the sunk cost fallacy.
This.
swampman posted:littlegreenpills posted:if the union had no problem with preserving slavery why was the missouri compromise repealed
i actually dont know very much about tha civil war
ok it sort of shows
swampman posted:i don't give a fuck about white guilt, roseweird, and i am not dropping, like, heavy, hardcore shit in this thread. if you remain unwilling to change your beliefs when they are explicitly pointed out to come from and support imperialism, without making any argument to the contrary, then you are an imperialist. you can try to tear me down but that is a distraction and nobody cares.
c_man: what makes sex slavery bad? is it that the sex slaves are having their rights violated? to me, it's more about their holes being violated. Well, the cops nabbed me off the street, beat every tooth out of my head, and forced me to give up my friends for imprisonment, you know what the worst part is? they were violating our rights the whole time!
funny, but there are people who go through this process in the USA, except in between steps they are afforded due process and visits with an attorney. the outcome is the same so who is the language of "rights" there to serve?
you raise a lot of interesting points and i agree with most of them but if not human rights what do you believe the guiding principle of government should be wrt how it treats its citizens?
Lykourgos posted:classical ethics
i don't know what those are, could you give a brief overview?
Panopticon posted:you raise a lot of interesting points and i agree with most of them but if not human rights what do you believe the guiding principle of government should be wrt how it treats its citizens?
That's a good question, I would say, we do not really need some kind of overarching morality to make society work. Why do I believe this, because currently, things work pretty much independent of the overarching moral opinion, which tends mainly to react to events and give people something to waste their time with.
swampman posted:Panopticon posted:you raise a lot of interesting points and i agree with most of them but if not human rights what do you believe the guiding principle of government should be wrt how it treats its citizens?
That's a good question, I would say, we do not really need some kind of overarching morality to make society work. Why do I believe this, because currently, things work pretty much independent of the overarching moral opinion, which tends mainly to react to events and give people something to waste their time with.
but i imagine you don't believe the status quo is the most desirable permutation of property, living standards, sustainability, political and economic power, social relations etc
given that, and the lack in your eyes of an overarching morality right now, perhaps the most desirable permutation requires some kind of overarching system?
are you a deconstructionist?
innsmouthful posted:c_man posted:when you approach some situation like swampman's example of child sex slaves in southeast asia and have the perspective that it's something that they shouldn't have to deal with, you're working with something that looks very much like a "right" whether or not the us govt uses "women's rights" as a support for whatever bullshit.
see this here is the thing. the perspective that people shouldn't have to deal with "bad" things or conditions isn't universal because the definition of what constitutes a "bad" thing is entirely arbitrary. we speak of universal education, freedom of speech, freedom from child labor, etc. as if there's some universal rightness to having them, but what makes having these "rights" more desirable than not having them? what makes them more correct, or somehow something universal that should be striven for? why should we strive for general welfare, really? and what does general welfare even mean? this may sound like a troll but it's really not, i promise.
a little earlier in the post you quoted i admit freely that any ideas that we have access to, to orient ourselves in the world and on which any sort of emancipation must rest is highly historically contingent. the concept of "rights" is among these or else this discussion wouldn't even really be conceivable. what the exact contents of these "rights" are is constantly re-interpreted, as they should be. there's obviously no guarantee that this will leave you with the "best" outcome, as swampman is always eager to point out, but i think that if you are willing to say that the status quo should be changed because it affects people in a way that we think no one should have to be affected, you're dealing with something that acts very much like a "right". if you have a different way of formulating that kind of idea that is as incorruptible by the powers that be as swampman then lemme know.
EDIT: i'll be very explicit here. i don't think that there's any "objective" reason to talk about people having "rights", but that, generally speaking, some conception of things that look and act a lot like rights underlie the personal moral systems of people engaged in emancipatory struggles around the world, and i dont think this is a problem (or at least one that would be solved by simply saying that no one has any rights so be happy with what you have, or whatever)
swampman posted:c_man: what makes sex slavery bad? is it that the sex slaves are having their rights violated? to me, it's more about their holes being violated. Well, the cops nabbed me off the street, beat every tooth out of my head, and forced me to give up my friends for imprisonment, you know what the worst part is? they were violating our rights the whole time!
funny, but there are people who go through this process in the USA, except in between steps they are afforded due process and visits with an attorney. the outcome is the same so who is the language of "rights" there to serve?
your presupposition here is that it's actually bad that the cops nabbed you off the street and beat every tooth out of your head. since im pretty sure that didn't actually happen (rich people dont generally hire ugly people to walk their dogs, i would imagine) you must think that there is something wrong with this in the abstract. my point is that even if you dont think about it this way, you are acting as if arbitrary violence is not something that should happen, even hypothetically. presumably you would also be angry if arbitrary violence happened to someone you didn't know personally (e.g. the child sex slaves). my saying that whether you like it or not you're acting very much as though (for example) there is something wrong with arbitrary violence in the abstract. and i dont see why i shouldnt call that a right.
Edited by c_man ()
Panopticon posted:what do you believe the guiding principle of government should be wrt how it treats its citizens?
Panopticon posted:but i imagine you don't believe the status quo is the most desirable permutation of property, living standards, sustainability, political and economic power, social relations etc
correct
given that, and the lack in your eyes of an overarching morality right now, perhaps the most desirable permutation requires some kind of overarching system?
no, there is no "lack" of an overarching or higher or ultimate morality in my eyes. that implies that there could be one but instead we have an empty space. all morality is personal. we are under the illusion that there is a universal morality, this illusion lets us to do stupid evil things and still think of ourselves as heroes.
c_man posted:your presupposition here is that it's actually bad that the cops nabbed you off the street ... you're acting very much as though (for example) there is something wrong with arbitrary violence in the abstract. and i dont see why i shouldnt call that a right.
i am acting that way because i think there is something wrong with arbitrary violence, specifically with police brutality. abstract and actual.
So i am toothless in my cell, why do we need to talk about rights? If we agree (although surprisingly, you seem not to agree) that the cops shouldn't knock people's teeth out, shouldn't that be enough? Why do i need to have had the right to keep my teeth, which was violated? The only point of defining it that way is so that there can be a loophole to the universal morality you are invoking. Rather than unequivocably say, dentists have better things to do than clean up after the administration of justice, rather than come out and say police brutality is wrong, and own that position, rather than reflexively think of arrestees as people, we hide behind "rights" and similar concepts because we desperately need God, the State, Dad, public consensus, or some other higher authority to be on our side, in order to make moral judgments about the world.
swampman posted:So i am toothless in my cell, why do we need to talk about rights? If we agree (although surprisingly, you seem not to agree) that the cops shouldn't knock people's teeth out, shouldn't that be enough? Why do i need to have had the right to keep my teeth, which was violated? The only point of defining it that way is so that there can be a loophole to the universal morality you are invoking. Rather than unequivocably say, dentists have better things to do than clean up after the administration of justice, rather than come out and say police brutality is wrong, and own that position, rather than reflexively think of arrestees as people, we hide behind "rights" and similar concepts because we desperately need God, the State, Dad, public consensus, or some other higher authority to be on our side, in order to make moral judgments about the world.
im saying that when you make claims that it is bad that you got your teeth knocked out (which i agree is a Bad Thing) you (and me) are acting as though, a priori, that should not have happened. im saying that acting this way essentially presumes something like a right for that not to happen. no one thinks first "hey my rights have been violated" and then "wow im pissed off that my rights have been violated!", its (i imagine) more like what you're saying "im pissed that this happened to me!" followed by "this shouldn't even happen to anyone!", so this personal experience gets abstracted to involve a hypothetical subject and i think this is the basic structure of a "right". i agree that different people can have different conceptions of what these are (and are by no means required to think in terms of this structure, but it's very common in my experience) and how they should be applied.
Check out what you just wrote, notice that the cops are already totally out of the picture. I "got my teeth knocked out" and it "should not have happened." More to the point, the cops shouldnt have done it and shouldnt be cops anymore.
You change the focus from the crime itself to whether the crime violated my rights. This raises the further question, should I have those rights to begin with? Are there exceptions to this right? Does my right impinge on the cops' right to feel safe by beating the teeth out of prisoners? And so on. The questions go on forever, the conversation can spiral forever, all this could be avoided if we had just called it police brutality and left me alone to regrow my fangs.
swampman posted:Right now, we exist "a priori" to these events. Our morality only matters for future events.
Check out what you just wrote, notice that the cops are already totally out of the picture. I "got my teeth knocked out" and it "should not have happened." More to the point, the cops shouldnt have done it and shouldnt be cops anymore.
You change the focus from the crime itself to whether the crime violated my rights. This raises the further question, should I have those rights to begin with? Are there exceptions to this right? Does my right impinge on the cops' right to feel safe by beating the teeth out of prisoners? And so on. The questions go on forever, the conversation can spiral forever, all this could be avoided if we had just called it police brutality and left me alone to regrow my fangs.
so you shift the focus from "rights" to "crimes" that have a similar jurisdiction. how is thinking about this in terms of "crimes" any different with regard to the complaints you have? the questions are the same. is the cop committing a crime when he punches you in the face? are there any exceptions to this? practically speaking, this is how these things literally work today.
i think i'd agree that the concept of rights is "ideological" in the sense that it distorts reality, reifies liberalism/capitalism, or whatever, but from a practical standpoint arguing against rights isn't going to accomplish much. it's one of the most deeply held and taken-for-granted "goods" i can think of. that's one of Gramsci's insights, right? attempting to totally overcome "ideology" is a bad bet, if not impossible. we struggle on an already-existing ideological terrain, and rights are fundamental to that terrain. 'rights' may have to be radicalized, extended, etc., rather than abandoned as inherently flawed.
i dunno though, this is something i plan to think about more.
toy posted:one thought i've had with the rights debate which sidesteps direct criticism of the concept of 'rights' itself is the fact that even if the concept has serious problems built into it, it's almost universally accepted in the West as a CRUCIAL framing tool for emancipation.
i think i'd agree that the concept of rights is "ideological" in the sense that it distorts reality, reifies liberalism/capitalism, or whatever, but from a practical standpoint arguing against rights isn't going to accomplish much. it's one of the most deeply held and taken-for-granted "goods" i can think of. that's one of Gramsci's insights, right? attempting to totally overcome "ideology" is a bad bet, if not impossible. we struggle on an already-existing ideological terrain, and rights are fundamental to that terrain. 'rights' may have to be radicalized, extended, etc., rather than abandoned as inherently flawed.
i dunno though, this is something i plan to think about more.
this is probably a much better version of the stuff that i said
the "who the hell are you" thing sounded a tad obnoxious
but the bottom line is, lol, a sixteen year old talking about politics, lol
but im glad you appreciate the importance of age and wisdom, at least to some extent.
roseweird posted:the most important thing is that we honour our elders when they deserve it
No, not at all, your statement gives no consideration to who can judge such a thing, and under what conditions such a judgment may be passed. What you are saying is dangerous, it allows every man and his dog to be a judge and just declare "oh you don't deserve honour!" It's ridiculous, chaos, this is madness!
c_man posted:so you shift the focus from "rights" to "crimes" that have a similar jurisdiction. how is thinking about this in terms of "crimes" any different with regard to the complaints you have? the questions are the same. is the cop committing a crime when he punches you in the face? are there any exceptions to this? practically speaking, this is how these things literally work today.
I don't "shift the focus from rights to crimes." I shift the focus from abstractions to reality. If the cop really did crack the suspect's molars, then the cop really shouldn't be a cop. Not, if the cop did crack his molar in a way that violated his human right to wisdom teeth or perpetual chewing, then... the cop needs UN monitoring, and quasi-celebrity status in the media over how pleased he is that he smashed that prisoner's face in. And Glenn Greenwald can write something VERY pissy and nobody will really be held accountable.
Are there exceptions? Sure, we could think of millions of them. That is what centuries of legal and moral and philosophical argument, scientific consensus, tons of other things we have agreed are somewhat based in a common and REAL experience of coping with the world and society. That is what judges are for, and judicial systems, to decide specific cases.
Here's a metaphor that probably doesn't make sense to others, at all: It's like you're saying, hockey teams try to win the Stanley Cup because the Stanley Cup is a really nice cup. No, they do it to be the best at hockey. In this metaphor the quality of "cupness" is human rights.
roseweird posted:yeah, i'm a new york jewish eunuch priestess. i'm wonderful. who the hell are you ?
