"Classical Liberals"

[Politesse]

I think objective measures exist. Something a centimeter long is objectively one centimeter long.

Culturally defined units of measurement are arbitrary but conventionalized, like any other word or symbol. They are not objective, only intersubjectively agreed upon. Various schema have attempted to fix such measures to objective phenomena, but those strategies are still dependent on social participation to function, and several different strategies have been tried over time, with various strengths and weaknesses. A centimeter is a Ship of Theseus, if you're thinking of it as identical with its paired objective quality; objectively, the only thing that ties a "centimeter as defined by one hundred-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole" (1793) and a "centimeter as defined as one tenth of the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during the same time it takes for a caesium-133 atom in ground state to transition between two hyperfine levels" (1967) is that we call both of those things centimeters.

But a centimeter does have vastly more utility than something like a ACT score. At the end of the day, we've had more than sixty years of continuously using centimeters as defined above without it causing conflict with observed data, and there is also a clear and shared goal of centimeter usage. The property of distance, which the metric system is intended to measure, is not a matter of subjective dispute. Unlike vague, fuzzy cultural concepts like "aptitude" and "excellence" or "subject skills" which the ACT is supposed to be measuring.

 

[Trausti]

In terms of testing general intelligence or general educational aptitude, I don't think there are true objective measures.

 

[laughing dog]

In terms of testing general intelligence or general educational aptitude, I don't think there are true objective measures.

And this shows that IQs are true objective measures because ..........?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Wherever I have worked, AA has not been practiced in such a manner. Everywhere I have worked, the hiring practice is to set the desired characteristics and then search more intensively to find qualified candidates from people in "protected" classes.

With the internet it shouldn't require an intensive search. You post it, see who responds.

You really have no clue what you are talking about. Posting on internet does not mean that everyone will see it. You need to post or advertise openings where people are likely to see it.

Post it on the major job sites where people are looking. There's no reason to do more.

 

[laughing dog]

Wherever I have worked, AA has not been practiced in such a manner. Everywhere I have worked, the hiring practice is to set the desired characteristics and then search more intensively to find qualified candidates from people in "protected" classes.

With the internet it shouldn't require an intensive search. You post it, see who responds.

You really have no clue what you are talking about. Posting on internet does not mean that everyone will see it. You need to post or advertise openings where people are likely to see it.

Post it on the major job sites where people are looking. There's no reason to do more.

Why, because you wave your hand and say so?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think objective measures exist. Something a centimeter long is objectively one centimeter long.

I leave having fun with vacuously true statements to others.

So you're basically saying you're insisting on an impossible standard.

Sorry, but you don't get to replace an imperfect measure with a worse one just because the first wasn't perfect.

 

[Trausti]

In terms of testing general intelligence or general educational aptitude, I don't think there are true objective measures.

And this shows that IQs are true objective measures because ..........?

This amazingly is from Slate, just before it became insufferably woke.

IQ Tests and the SAT Measure Something Real and Consequential

The College Board—the standardized testing behemoth that develops and administers the SAT and other tests—has redesigned its flagship product again....

slate.com

What this all means is that the SAT measures something—some stable characteristic of high school students other than their parents’ income—that translates into success in college. And what could that characteristic be? General intelligence. The content of the SAT is practically indistinguishable from that of standardized intelligence tests that social scientists use to study individual differences, and that psychologists and psychiatrists use to determine whether a person is intellectually disabled—and even whether a person should be spared execution in states that have the death penalty. Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on IQ tests—so highly that the Harvard education scholar Howard Gardner, known for his theory of multiple intelligences, once called the SAT and other scholastic measures “thinly disguised” intelligence tests.

 

[Jarhyn]

And I repeat, our society has had a design laid down into it.

It was done by intent, by human hands, whose owners knew what they were designing.

This design is persistent, and was again made to be so.

The name of this design is "white superiority".

It's shape was the denial of power, resources, and education to a closed segment of the population: black people.

We ought not accept the continuation of that design, that perpetuation of evil. In order to reject it, it must be  unmade, and it has not been.

The way to unmake something like this can only ever involve defeating of the messages, written in blood, and firings, and stolen children.

It means inviting people from communities who have FEW educated members to get more educated, even if they can do less with it than "a student of means". It means letting those people build momentum in their own segment even if it means slowing ourselves down.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Does the conservative fringe really think John Locke of all people would be on their side if he could meet them? "Where there is no law there is no freedom" John Locke?

Conservatives do not like John Locke. They're more fond of Thomas Hobbes. Classical liberals like John Locke.

By the way, the term "Classical liberal" has been around for decades. As Derric pointed out, it differentiates between a Locke liberal and a Kennedy liberal. The problem is, when one sees only two points of view, anything that isn't "us" must be "them" and therefore that means all of "them" are a homogeneous group.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

What exactly do you consider to be "true objective measures"?

In terms of testing general intelligence or general educational aptitude, I don't think there are true objective measures.

Surely you have some examples you could point at if you are willing to make statements about what people do or don't do with them.

Examples of what sorts of "true objective measures"?

At this point, I'll settle for any examples you have of what constitutes a "true objective measure".

Only True Scotsmen are capable of having True Objective Measures.

 

[Politesse]

The problem is, when one sees only two points of view, anything that isn't "us" must be "them" and therefore that means all of "them" are a homogeneous group.

I am curious what distinction you are trying to make? I do not see society as homogenous, nor politics. But I am also not clear between what two groups you are trying to differentiate between? If classical liberal means "someone who appeals to 'freedom' as an ideal", then it would seem the two largest American factions that qualify are the Republicans and Democrats. But no one confuses the Republicans and Democrats as being a homogenous group. Who are you worried that I will confuse for whom?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The problem is, when one sees only two points of view, anything that isn't "us" must be "them" and therefore that means all of "them" are a homogeneous group.

I am curious what distinction you are trying to make? I do not see society as homogenous, nor politics. But I am also not clear between what two groups you are trying to differentiate between? If classical liberal means "someone who appeals to 'freedom' as an ideal", then it would seem the two largest American factions that qualify are the Republicans and Democrats. But no one confuses the Republicans and Democrats as being a homogenous group. Who are you worried that I will confuse for whom?

It is not evident from your posts that you do not lump all who are not "us" together as "them" and make everything into two groups, as shown by you trying to say conservatives would have much to say about Locke when it is clear they are Hobbesian in their outlook. But conservatives are not you, and classical liberals are not you, so they are the same as each other.

 

[Politesse]

The problem is, when one sees only two points of view, anything that isn't "us" must be "them" and therefore that means all of "them" are a homogeneous group.

I am curious what distinction you are trying to make? I do not see society as homogenous, nor politics. But I am also not clear between what two groups you are trying to differentiate between? If classical liberal means "someone who appeals to 'freedom' as an ideal", then it would seem the two largest American factions that qualify are the Republicans and Democrats. But no one confuses the Republicans and Democrats as being a homogenous group. Who are you worried that I will confuse for whom?

It is not evident from your posts that you do not lump all who are not "us" together as "them" and make everything into two groups, as shown by you trying to say conservatives would have much to say about Locke when it is clear they are Hobbesian in their outlook. But conservatives are not you, and classical liberals are not you, so they are the same as each other.

That is not my impression at this juncture. Rather, I think the recent championing of the phrase "classical liberal" by the neoconservative fringe is entirely cynical in nature, borrowed only for its prestige and to annoy political liberals.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Again, let me point out that the real classical liberals, who supported free trade, were actually fighting against a corrupted mercantilist economy. It was really quite terrible how the mercantilist economy worked to keep the white male power structure entrenched. To do business, you had to have a royal charter, and in order to get a royal charter, you had to have family connections and, most importantly, status as a member of the nobility. It was rare for anyone not born to a noble family to ever succeed at gaining enough social status to get a royal charter, and if you did, it was only by doing something to make another person in the nobility or the royal family more powerful, which only made you a contributor to a corrupted system.

In reality, those that supported free trade, at the time, were speaking up for the working class and also the middle class of their time, and to say otherwise constitutes hideous mendacity.

The classical liberals were calling for the liberation of people that did not have noble titles or influence.

If you cannot say the same, then you are not a classical liberal, but you are a liar.

I am with Adam Smith in regard to the progressive tax: it's a fantastic idea.

"The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."

Adam Smith and other classical liberals were trying to empower the middle class and the working class of their time. The restrictions on free trade, in their time, were ones that overtly kept the wealth of the empire in the hands of whomever happened to be buddies with the king or an influential member of the nobility. They were fighting against a system that made it absolutely impossible for ordinary people to get ahead.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The problem is, when one sees only two points of view, anything that isn't "us" must be "them" and therefore that means all of "them" are a homogeneous group.

I am curious what distinction you are trying to make? I do not see society as homogenous, nor politics. But I am also not clear between what two groups you are trying to differentiate between? If classical liberal means "someone who appeals to 'freedom' as an ideal", then it would seem the two largest American factions that qualify are the Republicans and Democrats. But no one confuses the Republicans and Democrats as being a homogenous group. Who are you worried that I will confuse for whom?

It is not evident from your posts that you do not lump all who are not "us" together as "them" and make everything into two groups, as shown by you trying to say conservatives would have much to say about Locke when it is clear they are Hobbesian in their outlook. But conservatives are not you, and classical liberals are not you, so they are the same as each other.

That is not my impression at this juncture. Rather, I think the recent championing of the phrase "classical liberal" by the neoconservative fringe is entirely cynical in nature, borrowed only for its prestige and to annoy political liberals.

Classical liberals recognized neoconservatives as enemies long before progressives recognized neoconservatives as rivals.

 

[Politesse]

The problem is, when one sees only two points of view, anything that isn't "us" must be "them" and therefore that means all of "them" are a homogeneous group.

I am curious what distinction you are trying to make? I do not see society as homogenous, nor politics. But I am also not clear between what two groups you are trying to differentiate between? If classical liberal means "someone who appeals to 'freedom' as an ideal", then it would seem the two largest American factions that qualify are the Republicans and Democrats. But no one confuses the Republicans and Democrats as being a homogenous group. Who are you worried that I will confuse for whom?

It is not evident from your posts that you do not lump all who are not "us" together as "them" and make everything into two groups, as shown by you trying to say conservatives would have much to say about Locke when it is clear they are Hobbesian in their outlook. But conservatives are not you, and classical liberals are not you, so they are the same as each other.

That is not my impression at this juncture. Rather, I think the recent championing of the phrase "classical liberal" by the neoconservative fringe is entirely cynical in nature, borrowed only for its prestige and to annoy political liberals.

Classical liberals recognized neoconservatives as enemies long before progressives recognized neoconservatives as rivals.

Are you positing that Classical Liberals are a different group than either of the other two you mention? The notion of classical liberalism seems more like a vague appeal to certain shared values than an endorsement of any particular party.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Of course Classical Liberal is different from Neoconservative and Progressive. It isn't vague either, unless you are trying to make it so in order to say "those two groups are not part of 'us' so they are the same 'them'."

 

[Politesse]

Of course Classical Liberal is different from Neoconservative and Progressive. It isn't vague either, unless you are trying to make it so in order to say "those two groups are not part of 'us' so they are the same 'them'."

I don't know who this "us" is, I abhor partisan politics. But you're welcome to define your terms in a clearer fashion.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Think about it. Can you name a political ideology in the US today who respect John Locke and Adam Smith as early pioneers into their school of thought? No, not conservatives or Republicans.

You can say you abhor partisan politics.