Liberty vs. Democracy

[Martin Hash]

It always seemed odd to me that The Left calls Trump a dictator, and that democracy is dead. It seemed like such an easy to refute claim. I finally understand: The Left puts democracy above liberty, and because they keep getting defeated in their ambitions by our liberty-centric jurisprudence system, they perceive that as a failure of democracy. They don’t understand that democracy is simply a convenient side-effect of Liberty, not the ultimate goal. If it wasn’t for The Constitution, they could have Marxism now.

[Fife]

Jacobins gonna Jacobin

[Speaker to Animals]

Liberty and Democracy, both framed as conceptually self-evident and universal goods, are mutually incompatible. Only one can be seen as the universal self-evident good and other subordinated to it.

Democracy necessarily leads to the trampling of liberties, since the majority might simply vote to violate the liberties of a minority (which happens fucking always, throughout the entire history of democracy).

Liberty necessarily implies not even every single member of the society minus one guy can violate the liberties of that one guy. (the antithesis of a gang rape). If you believe, for example, that the white American majority cannot vote to enslave black people again, then you necessarily subordinate democracy to liberty, and you sure as shit do not believe democracy is a universal good.

[Speaker to Animals]

Everybody needs to understand this and figure out what side you are on.

Soros, for example, is a devotee of Karl Popper. He believes normative law is the only law and that democracy is the highest good in social and political philosophy. If the majority decide you don't have a right to own a gun, then you do not have a right to own that gun. That's what democracy means when framed as a universal and self-evident good.

If that's the side you are on, then great. But you do not get to then say you are on team liberty. You certainly are not.

[Speaker to Animals]

Jacobins gonna Jacobin

Interesting analysis, but I think the focus on property and market interpretations are very limited. The principle of investment in ownership of the nation carries over to the more accurate interpretation: the warriors who create a territory and constantly defend that territory have the most investment in maintaining that territory and their tribe that lives on that territory. This is how humans are supposed to live because it is how we evolved.

Calling that property and whatnot I think is a cheap way to shoe in capitalistic language where it really does not belong.

Everything he said about monarchs could be said about the warrior caste. Really, kings were the human embodiment of the entire warrior class (aristocracy). The real source of the ownership and care for the nation comes from the warriors who made that kingdom/nation/tribal area prosperous and possible.

To wit: his last point is wrong. An historian could (and some do) come to the exact same conclusion I did. But I could also argue this from a physical anthropology and evolutionary psychology perspective, and I think it is far more accurate than looking at it through the lens of economics.

[Speaker to Animals]

Oh, and I forgot to mention an important point about why leftists are so concerned with democracy and why losing is so terrible on their psyches..

Leftists believe that democracy is the ultimate good, not liberty. They know deep down the dangers of democracy and fear what could happen if their own ideology were used against them; i.e. if their victors decided to do to them what they would like to do the victors (e.g. French Revolutionary purges and worse).

People who place democracy as the highest good are deeply terrified of losing elections because they at some level know the stakes if their world view with respect to liberty being subordinated to democracy were adopted by all.

To use my example of a white American majority re-enslaving black Americans.. Leftists I think deep down believe this is possible, which is why they constantly fear-monger to that effect, precisely because they themselves value democracy rather than liberty. In a pure democracy, it would be perfectly legitimate for the white majority to enslave a black minority, since it was put to a vote. So for them losing like they are right now is truly terrifying and disturbing. They see Trump as a Hitler because they at some level believe the democratic will should be obeyed all the time.

Because they do not subordinate democracy to liberty, they live in real fear that something like the re-enslavement of blacks can happen again. It's not from their view something we are prohibited from doing because it's wrong, but a terrible outcome they must constantly be vigilant against and preempt via winning elections. Moral wrongs in their world can only be avoided by winning elections against people who wish to impose them.

[Ex-California]

Everybody needs to understand this and figure out what side you are on.

Soros, for example, is a devotee of Karl Popper. He believes normative law is the only law and that democracy is the highest good in social and political philosophy. If the majority decide you don't have a right to own a gun, then you do not have a right to own that gun. That's what democracy means when framed as a universal and self-evident good.

If that's the side you are on, then great. But you do not get to then say you are on team liberty. You certainly are not.

I used to think that the voice of the majority was the be all end all, and then I realized that there's no way individual rights can be upheld that way.

When you really boil it down though, the choice is between individualism and collectivism.

[Ex-California]

You'd think the Left would want to preserve liberty to protect their precious victim groups, but collectivism is more important to them than individual rights at the end of the day

[GloryofGreece]

Oh, and I forgot to mention an important point about why leftists are so concerned with democracy and why losing is so terrible on their psyches..

Leftists believe that democracy is the ultimate good, not liberty. They know deep down the dangers of democracy and fear what could happen if their own ideology were used against them; i.e. if their victors decided to do to them what they would like to do the victors (e.g. French Revolutionary purges and worse).

People who place democracy as the highest good are deeply terrified of losing elections because they at some level know the stakes if their world view with respect to liberty being subordinated to democracy were adopted by all.

To use my example of a white American majority re-enslaving black Americans.. Leftists I think deep down believe this is possible, which is why they constantly fear-monger to that effect, precisely because they themselves value democracy rather than liberty. In a pure democracy, it would be perfectly legitimate for the white majority to enslave a black minority, since it was put to a vote. So for them losing like they are right now is truly terrifying and disturbing. They see Trump as a Hitler because they at some level believe the democratic will should be obeyed all the time.

Because they do not subordinate democracy to liberty, they live in real fear that something like the re-enslavement of blacks can happen again. It's not from their view something we are prohibited from doing because it's wrong, but a terrible outcome they must constantly be vigilant against and preempt via winning elections. Moral wrongs in their world can only be avoided by winning elections against people who wish to impose them.

What about viewing people's beliefs in a pyschological / socialogical dimension of Jonathon Haidt's idea of 6 dimensions viewed in this graph

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=ht ... D3oECAcQCQ
I think it makes a lot of sense. These intuitions and values push people to the left and right. With a significantly smaller (mostly) male portion of the American population being more "liberty" minded. Really though that's not at all what drives most men. A majority are moved by all six dimensions in one degree or another. According to him "conservatives" generally value all six fairly evenly whereas "liberals" value care and fairness and don't really value authority, loyalty, and sanctity as much or at all on the farther more radical fringes.

Then to complicate things a bit more self identified conservatives and liberals also have different views of what "fairness" actually means. For example, liberal think of fairness as "equality" and conservative think of it meaning something like " you reap what you sow" , proportionality etc.

[Speaker to Animals]

Oh, and I forgot to mention an important point about why leftists are so concerned with democracy and why losing is so terrible on their psyches..

Leftists believe that democracy is the ultimate good, not liberty. They know deep down the dangers of democracy and fear what could happen if their own ideology were used against them; i.e. if their victors decided to do to them what they would like to do the victors (e.g. French Revolutionary purges and worse).

People who place democracy as the highest good are deeply terrified of losing elections because they at some level know the stakes if their world view with respect to liberty being subordinated to democracy were adopted by all.

To use my example of a white American majority re-enslaving black Americans.. Leftists I think deep down believe this is possible, which is why they constantly fear-monger to that effect, precisely because they themselves value democracy rather than liberty. In a pure democracy, it would be perfectly legitimate for the white majority to enslave a black minority, since it was put to a vote. So for them losing like they are right now is truly terrifying and disturbing. They see Trump as a Hitler because they at some level believe the democratic will should be obeyed all the time.

Because they do not subordinate democracy to liberty, they live in real fear that something like the re-enslavement of blacks can happen again. It's not from their view something we are prohibited from doing because it's wrong, but a terrible outcome they must constantly be vigilant against and preempt via winning elections. Moral wrongs in their world can only be avoided by winning elections against people who wish to impose them.

What about viewing people's beliefs in a pyschological / socialogical dimension of Jonathon Haidt's idea of 6 dimensions viewed in this graph

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=ht ... D3oECAcQCQ
I think it makes a lot of sense. These intuitions and values push people to the left and right. With a significantly smaller (mostly) male portion of the American population being more "liberty" minded. Really though that's not at all what drives most men. A majority are moved by all six dimensions in one degree or another. According to him "conservatives" generally value all six fairly evenly whereas "liberals" value care and fairness and don't really value authority, loyalty, and sanctity as much or at all on the farther more radical fringes.

Then to complicate things a bit more self identified conservatives and liberals also have different views of what "fairness" actually means. For example, liberal think of fairness as "equality" and conservative think of it meaning something like " you reap what you sow" , proportionality etc.

I don't really think any framework like this makes sense. I take issue with the simplistic ideologicalization of human nature.

I object to the notion that most people consider democracy as self-evident universal good because they obviously do not.

I also object to the notion that most people consider "liberty" the self-evident universal good. First of all, none of us even agree upon what "Liberty" means. Secondly, even in the context of our own government it's obviously farcical. For example, in the first amendment it states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Do we really believe that? Of course not. If some group of Mexicans wanted to revive the old Aztec religion and start kidnapping white Americans for human sacrifice in their temple complexes, we'd probably shut them down, right? It also says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". Do we really believe that? Not really. I'd imagine, for any rational person, I could find some infringement of the right to bear arms that they'd support.

All this bullshit is ideology. It bores me. I am far more interested in looking at humans in the context of evolution and biology. That makes far more sense to me. I see the left as an evolutionary maladaption that arises from effect upon sexual selection of generations of urban life. I see much of this "collectivism versus individualism" nonsense as a matter of men versus women, and weak men versus strong men. It's just biological. Women and weak men want to impose limitations on strong men. Duh.

Let's look at it from an evolutionary perspective. How did homo sapiens evolve to exist socially? We evolved as patrilocal gangs of males that secured territories and facilitated prosperity for females and their children within that territory in exchange for sex and reproduction. We interestingly evolved to become more pair-bonded than tournament based, and we developed the highest paternal investment of any other species. From this arose the concept of the human family and sexual faithfulness. From those things arose complex society.


Borders, hierarchies, accountability, meritocracy, etc. are just how human males deal with securing the common territory. Collectivization, work-sharing, burden-sharing, etc., are how human females evolved to manage the camp within that territory. There is nothing inherently wrong with collectivism or individualism. It depends how you apply them and to what. Everything is mixed up now and we probably should untangle things.

Concepts like liberty and democracy are higher-order concepts that have little to do with what the human species evolved to be. Those things we figured out with our intellects. Has it not occurred to any of you that what we might intellectually believe is the "truth" in terms of how to organize society is utterly incompatible with who we are as a biological species on this Earth??