Political differences in what is immoral

[T.G.G. Moogly]

This is not news.

To conservatives and libertarians (who are completely different, but just happen to take the exact same positions on every issue except for recreational drugs and isolationism), anything that prevents or impedes the establishment of a new overclass to rule over us is immoral.

To liberals, returning to feudal-style rule by an overclass would be an immoral thing. Because we hate freedom.

I always bring up the fact that self government is a liberal invention. This always pisses them off.

Oh, and I forgot to add that our Constitution is a body of regulations.

 

[doubtingt]

The research itself does not claim to say anything about what is or is not "appropriate" in determining morality. The research just shows differences in what liberals and conservatives feel is appropriate and relevant in determining morality. It is only your only personal subjective values that make it sound like they are being judgmental against conservatives. Conservatives don't feel bad about their use of structure and obedience to determine morality. That is the whole point. People feel bad when they violate their own principles and ethics. Conservatives have a somewhat different standard of ethics, so they do not feel bad. Your criticism of the research is like criticizing someone for pointing out that theists turn to God as the determinant of what is moral, as though theists would find that an insult. No, it is just a fact that they do that, and they do it because they think it is appropriate to do. You and I might take it as an insult to be told we turn to God's authority, but that is because we don't value authority and obedience as a source of morality.

I did't interposes my subjective views so why you attack along those lines doesn't seem relevant. My point is the study isn't about morality.

Your claim that it isn't about morality is not rooted in a scientific/psychological definition of the concept, but in your own subjective feelings on what should be considered a moral issue. You present no scientific definition of morality by which you have any basis to claim their operational definition of it is invalid. Your reject of it is based on pure subjective emotion.

It's about what some liberal chaps consider liberal and conservative construction of what they consider moral what is political not moral analysis.

Wrong. First, you have zero evidence of the authors politics. Second, they used methods that allowed liberals and conservatives to say what they themselves viewed as moral issues. The participants were asked to report events they experienced that they viewed as involving moral or immoral acts, however the participants chose to interpret the concept of morality. Unlike you, they operated under an objectively and psychologically defined concept of morality, and this is the scientifically valid way to study it, since morality is nothing but a subjective state of preference, it is most valid to define whether something is a moral issue by the subjective moral judgments of each person.

Anyway the study misses the main issue, the effects of local environments with respect to one's moral concept of the world. See, I'd just rather work outside the individual or group. Makes me happy.

Note the emotion in your statement, which is your basis for dismissing the study, not any scientifically valid critique, nor any evidence of bias on their part. How local environments shape morality is "a" different question, but not "the main issue". Again, that is a purely subjective and non-scientific judgment on your part. What they are examining is how people who align themselves with parties, candidates, and policies that are generally labelled "conservative" and "liberal" differ from each other in the kinds of things they view as moral and immoral acts in everyday life. It helps to understand the core values and motives underlying support for various parties and policies. What you are asking is how environments shape what core values and motives people have. It is a different, but no more objectively valid or important question.

 

[doubtingt]

Yes, what authority one recognizes will determine what acts are disobedient is thus immoral. But people do not just differ in what authorities they recognize. They also differ in the extent to which they seek out and recognize authorities at all, and whether they view obedience to whatever authorities they recognize as a vital moral obligation. That is what is means to be an "authoritarian". It is a moral preference for creating and preserving hierarchical power structures, largely stemming from fear and anxiety about the disorder and uncertainty that clear chains of authority are designed to reduce. Note also that even when you examine the kinds of authorities that conservative recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial and whose goal is to either preserve or create (depending on whether it already exists) clear imbalances of power via hierarchical systems. Of course, they also usually want systems where they or their identity group are at the top of that power structure. Thus, they can and do oppose other authoritarians and their authorities, but unlike a true liberal they are not opposing authoritarianism itself.

That may be all very well for "true liberals", but it has little to say about the social democrats who are the great majority a small % of Americans who call themselves "liberals". They differ from conservatives in what authorities they recognize, sure; but they equally view obedience to the authority they recognize as a vital moral obligation, just like conservatives do.

I corrected your statement, so that is has some validity and is no longer clearly refuted by all the relevant scientific evidence, including the study in question and also hundreds of others over several decades. The are a small % of the most extreme "liberals" who are essentially marxists and/or seek to coerce equality of outcomes via authoritarian means that go beyond policing injustice to treating individual unjustly to achieve group-level equality of outcomes. These are not a "great majority" of self labeled liberals, but a minority of them. They are not only a "minority" numerically, but disproportionately ethnic minorities among liberals in general. Ethnic minorities tend to score more like white conservatives on measures of authoritarianism. The majority of liberals are concerned about institutional inequalities, but also rather cautious about policies that seek to force equality of outcomes as the solution to unjust practices that create unmerited inequalities in outcomes. For example, popular support for state censoring of speech and images on the grounds that it is offensive is significantly stronger among social conservatives than social liberals. It is not just a matter of the content of the speech. Censorship of curse words, "unpatriotic" acts, deviant sexuality, and nudity get far more support from conservatives than any form of censorship for anything gets from liberals. Liberals use their own rights to boycott and put social pressure on people rather than the violent force of the state like conservative do. In addition, liberals strongest opposition to speech is when it is used as an act of oppression and to support authoritarian inequalities, unlike conservatives who oppose speech that is not disparaging about anyone or any group but merely expresses personal feelings about objects, government policies, events, or is an expression of love.

When you examine the kinds of authorities that social democrats recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial and whose goal is to either preserve or create clear imbalances of power via non-hierarchical systems;

You cannot have imbalance of power in a non-hierarchical system. By definition, a hierarchy is system with an imbalance of power/worth/authority. IF a system has an imbalance of power, it is by definition hierarchical. This just shows what is already clear, which is that your just making up "just as bad" nonsense that isn't even logically possible let alone that has any correspondence to any empirical evidence.

and "authoritarian" doesn't mean a moral preference for creating and preserving hierarchical power structures, just a moral preference for creating and preserving power structures.

Yes, by definition authoritarian requires deference to authority, which can only exist if some people have more power than others, which is the definition of a hierarchy.

It isn't conservatives making cheap light-bulbs and decently performing shower-heads illegal.
It isn't conservatives telling bikers what to wear around their heads.

These things are not merely personal acts, but have a real impact upon others and upon commonly shared and paid for infrastructure and resources. All economic exchanges of goods impact and depend upon public resources and infrastructure. Limiting abuse of that infrastructure by some people against others, is authoritarianism. It is the majority population using its collectively greater power to defend itself from such abuses. This is not the same as conservatives who ban speech or displays of nudity on the grounds that they are against God's will.
Such regulations have the same intent and general justification as regulations against robbery and physical assault. Unlike conservative supported laws, they are not merely designed to prohibit acts because they deviate from the norm, personal tastes, or what some authority prefers, but to protect individual citizens from abuse by other citizens. Whether all such regulations are accurate in their assumptions about the harm done is a separate issue.

It isn't conservatives banning me from selling my house unless I rip out my fence and put in a new one because my current fence conforms to the old code and they enacted a new code.

That isn't liberals doing that either. Most liberals either don't know or don't support such laws. That is byproduct of mindless application of bureaucracy. But again, building code regulations are rooted in the principle of protecting the commons and their own safety which can be harmed by reckless workmanship. Are there absurd abuses of this system and mindless misapplication of rules? Sure, but that is not what is more supported by liberals.

 

[Bomb#20]

Do you see where you used loaded and negatively charged words to describe the moral preferences of conservatives?

... No I don't see it. Enlighten me.
unless you mean the shopkeeper analogy.

That's a good start. You clearly have at least some ability to apply critical thought to your own ideas. Keep going.

If you aren't spotting the next one and need a hint, answer me these questions three...

Show

1. Do conservatives have eyes?
2. Do conservatives have hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; are they fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a liberal is?
3. If you prick a conservative, does he bleed?

 

[zorq]

... No I don't see it. Enlighten me.
unless you mean the shopkeeper analogy.

That's a good start. You clearly have at least some ability to apply critical thought to your own ideas. Keep going.

If you aren't spotting the next one and need a hint, answer me these questions three...

Show

1. Do conservatives have eyes?
2. Do conservatives have hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; are they fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a liberal is?
3. If you prick a conservative, does he bleed?

I asked you to enlighten me. I don't feel enlightened. Go play your condescending games with someone else.

 

[Bomb#20]

I asked you to enlighten me. I don't feel enlightened. Go play your condescending games with someone else.

... they have to consider just how valuable the destitute panhandler of undesirable ethnic group A is compared to the rich career politician of desirable ethnic group B before they start evaluating what is a fair interaction between the two.

You bloody well just called your political opponents racists en masse! Why the devil would you imagine this doesn't merit a dump truck load of condescension?

(If you found my hint unenlightening, it was an invitation to you to think of your opponents as humans instead of cartoon characters, to put yourself in their shoes, to reread what you wrote about them, and to think about which words would offend you if somebody said them about you. "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.")

 

[zorq]

... they have to consider just how valuable the destitute panhandler of undesirable ethnic group A is compared to the rich career politician of desirable ethnic group B before they start evaluating what is a fair interaction between the two.

You bloody well just called your political opponents racists en masse! Why the devil would you imagine this doesn't merit a dump truck load of condescension?

(If you found my hint unenlightening, it was an invitation to you to think of your opponents as humans instead of cartoon characters, to put yourself in their shoes, to reread what you wrote about them, and to think about which words would offend you if somebody said them about you. "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.")

I disagree. I was providing an example of one potential comparison a single conservative might use to evaluate the appropriate interactions of two individuals. Conservatives out there who aren't racists won't recognize desirable ethnicity B and undesirable ethnicity A as having a different value. Also, the shopkeeper thumb scale fairness analogy applies to some liberals. Almost all conservatives will recognize a veteran police officer as having more value than a bum. I'm not trying to call all conservatives racists. Many conservatives I have met are racists, some are not. If you had responded to my post with a respectful tone that actually conveyed your issues with my post we could have cleared up this misunderstanding much more quickly.

I found your hint unenlightening because I already regard conservative humans as humans. Humans are full of foibles and faults. Across the board everyone has issues. I found your hint condescending because you weren't talking to me you were talking down to me. Would you like me to talk down to you? "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."

Misunderstandings happen. Especially on the internet. The next time you you disagree with someone consider asking for clarification before throwing shit at them.

So back to my original question what were the loaded words that doubtingt used?

 

[fromderinside]

Makes me happy.

Note the emotion in your statement, which is your basis for dismissing the study, not any scientifically valid critique, nor any evidence of bias on their part. How local environments shape morality is "a" different question, but not "the main issue". Again, that is a purely subjective and non-scientific judgment on your part. What they are examining is how people who align themselves with parties, candidates, and policies that are generally labelled "conservative" and "liberal" differ from each other in the kinds of things they view as moral and immoral acts in everyday life. It helps to understand the core values and motives underlying support for various parties and policies. What you are asking is how environments shape what core values and motives people have. It is a different, but no more objectively valid or important question.

Psychophysics makes me happy too. Individuals and groups are contextual behavioral objects. Therein lies the basis for my rejection of letting these or those form a basis for anything said to be objective which is the whole idea of using SM. The bias on their part is in their presumption that self definition can be applied objectively. Every time one tries codes need be applied to interpret, objectify self definitions. There is no way a Port Orford Liberal Democrat is anything like a Woodland Hills liberal democrat although I have been a liberal democrat in both places so a random selection of self professed opinion based on unstable terms is a random selection of something that could be characterized as something by the label only.

I know nothing of their political view which is exactly why there can be no valid examination of the meaning conservative and liberal. Using current text definitions for such is no better.

When I perform experiments I have one axis which is anchored to the accepted catalog of natural law. There is no way this study can claim such a construction so, in my humble view, the study is only scientific in form and operational definition which are really only operational in context. Having said that, and I know that is enough, I grant that something was done here. It is, like I said, a retreat to psychology of the seventies with which I am extremely familiar.

So here we are with core values which aren't stable by term not objective and we're expected to conclude something from that. Its great for David Brooks and Thomas Friedman but it has no place in other than today's national political theater

 

[doubtingt]

Note the emotion in your statement, which is your basis for dismissing the study, not any scientifically valid critique, nor any evidence of bias on their part. How local environments shape morality is "a" different question, but not "the main issue". Again, that is a purely subjective and non-scientific judgment on your part. What they are examining is how people who align themselves with parties, candidates, and policies that are generally labelled "conservative" and "liberal" differ from each other in the kinds of things they view as moral and immoral acts in everyday life. It helps to understand the core values and motives underlying support for various parties and policies. What you are asking is how environments shape what core values and motives people have. It is a different, but no more objectively valid or important question.

Psychophysics makes me happy too. Individuals and groups are contextual behavioral objects. Therein lies the basis for my rejection of letting these or those form a basis for anything said to be objective which is the whole idea of using SM. The bias on their part is in their presumption that self definition can be applied objectively. Every time one tries codes need be applied to interpret, objectify self definitions.

Yes, just like in biology where organisms must be coded as belonging to this or that category, and their behaviors must be coded as being of qualitatively different types, or just whether a given behavior occurred or not. Qualitative categorization exist in all sciences, doesn't make it non-objective, and is all that you are talking about here.
Coders blind to what a participants ideology is or any other statements made by the participant, code each statement independently, and separate coders show agreement on the assigned category over 90% of the time. The statements by the participants are empirically observable events, an explicit set of criteria for categorizing the utterances is established, and they show high level of reliability among different coders in applying the criteria. That is objective science by an conception of science that isn't childishly simplistic.

There is no way a Port Orford Liberal Democrat is anything like a Woodland Hills liberal democrat

Yes, there is a way and all available empirical evidence shows that you are wrong and that liberals from different areas are reliably more similar to each other than to the conservatives in their own areas. This is true at at when comparing people at the same time point within the United States, which is all that the study is aiming to speak to. In addition, all that matters for the question being asked in the study is what the differences between self-labeled liberals and conservatives are that reliably emerge across local environments in the US and Canada. The sample was not a groups of college kids from one town. They were a representative sample of adults from across the US and Canada. Things that were uniquely true of only liberal or conservatives in select regions would not show up in the data. Only if something were generally true of the people in these categories across the regions would it emerge as a statistically significant difference in this study. In addition, thousands of studies over nearly a half century show that very stable relationships between self-labeled ideology within the US and specific attitudes and behaviors consistently emerge across time, geography, and context. Most of your complaints would be more applicable if they were trying to measure or make claims about these variables in terms of some absolute quantity, such as "liberals care about authority X amount on a ratio scale where 0 means the objective total absence of caring, and X means a specific number of linear interval units above absolute zero. That isn't what they are doing, nor is that at all neccessary for the measures to be reliable and valid indicators of something very real about which objective and scientific inferences can be drawn.

 

[Bomb#20]

You bloody well just called your political opponents racists en masse!

I disagree. I was providing an example of one potential comparison a single conservative might use to evaluate the appropriate interactions of two individuals.

That's an interesting hypothesis. But it fails to account for the observation that in "... they have to consider just how valuable the destitute panhandler of undesirable ethnic group A is ...", the antecedent of "they" is the "conservatives" in "To conservatives, fairness is balancing the scale with the shop keeper's thumb on one side. Fairness still factors in to their moral compass but they have to consider just how valuable the destitute panhandler of undesirable ethnic group A is compared to the rich career politician of desirable ethnic group B before they start evaluating what is a fair interaction between the two." It also fails to account for the observation that "they have to" contains "have to" rather than "might". So it's a low-probability hypothesis.

I found your hint condescending because you weren't talking to me you were talking down to me. Would you like me to talk down to you? "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."

In the event that I ever practice gross unfairness to my opponents as a group, in the course of preaching about fairness, I hope somebody rubs my nose in it, so I'll remember not to do it again.

So back to my original question what were the loaded words that doubtingt used?

"they don't really care about fairness as a principle"

"order and control, when these are valued above liberty, dignity, equality, and reason"

"thus fairness is not a common principle on which the evaluate the morality of actions. Conservatives notion of fairness is largely limited to judging a process as unfair if it fails to create unequal outcomes that they presume are merited by inequalities of worth."

"when you examine the kinds of authorities that conservative recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial"

 

[Bomb#20]

That may be all very well for "true liberals", but it has little to say about the social democrats who are the great majority a small % of Americans who call themselves "liberals". They differ from conservatives in what authorities they recognize, sure; but they equally view obedience to the authority they recognize as a vital moral obligation, just like conservatives do.

I corrected your statement, so that is has some validity and is no longer clearly refuted by all the relevant scientific evidence, including the study in question and also hundreds of others over several decades. The are a small % of the most extreme "liberals" who are essentially marxists and/or seek to coerce equality of outcomes via authoritarian means that go beyond policing injustice to treating individual unjustly to achieve group-level equality of outcomes. These are not a "great majority" of self labeled liberals, but a minority of them.

Huh. I distinctly recall writing "social democrats". And hey, there it is in the quoted text. And yet you seem to have read it as "socialists". Are you under the impression that there isn't anything in the political spectrum between liberals and people who are essentially marxists?

The trouble is, terminology is massively screwed up in the U.S. We had a McCarthyism outbreak, vanilla social democrats were getting tarred as communists, a lot of them renamed themselves "liberals" in self-defense, and this dragged Americans' impression of the word "liberal" leftward. In Europe the original meanings survived better. There are still little Liberal parties for the surviving smattering of liberals to vote for, while the bulk of the people who'd get called "liberal" in the U.S. vote Social Democrat or Labour or whatever their country's equivalent is.

For example, popular support for state censoring of speech and images on the grounds that it is offensive is significantly stronger among social conservatives than social liberals. It is not just a matter of the content of the speech. Censorship of curse words, "unpatriotic" acts, deviant sexuality, and nudity get far more support from conservatives than any form of censorship for anything gets from liberals.

So who are the constituents for all the hate speech codes?

In addition, liberals strongest opposition to speech is when it is used as an act of oppression and to support authoritarian inequalities, unlike conservatives who oppose speech that is not disparaging about anyone or any group but merely expresses personal feelings about objects, government policies, events, or is an expression of love.

So censorship doesn't count as authoritarian if it's for a good cause?

When you examine the kinds of authorities that social democrats recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial and whose goal is to either preserve or create clear imbalances of power via non-hierarchical systems;

You cannot have imbalance of power in a non-hierarchical system. By definition, a hierarchy is system with an imbalance of power/worth/authority. IF a system has an imbalance of power, it is by definition hierarchical. <insult snipped>

Of course you can have an imbalance of power in a non-hierarchical system. That's what "majority rule" means. The whole point is that nobody's vote counts more than anybody else's and yet the power doesn't balance -- those in the majority get what they want and those in the majority have to do as they're told.

and "authoritarian" doesn't mean a moral preference for creating and preserving hierarchical power structures, just a moral preference for creating and preserving power structures.

Yes, by definition authoritarian requires deference to authority, which can only exist if some people have more power than others, which is the definition of a hierarchy.

If you want to call 51% getting to order the other 49% around a "hierarchy", suit yourself. When you examine the kinds of authorities that the social democrats you call "liberals" recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial and whose goal is to either preserve or create clear imbalances of power via systems that are authoritarian whether you choose to label them hierarchical or not. It wasn't the conservatives on the Supreme Court who ruled that the government can ban a citizen from smoking pot she grew on her own land without ever buying or selling it, using the excuse that they were "regulating interstate commerce". It was the so-called "liberals" who did that.

It isn't conservatives making cheap light-bulbs and decently performing shower-heads illegal. It isn't conservatives telling bikers what to wear around their heads.

These things are not merely personal acts, but have a real impact upon others and upon commonly shared and paid for infrastructure and resources.

I'm not sure how pumping water out of my well, showering, and pouring the water into my septic tank, from which it filters back down into the groundwater, has a real impact upon others and upon commonly shared and paid for infrastructure and resources; but no doubt my shower abuses others every bit as much as public nudity does.

All economic exchanges of goods impact and depend upon public resources and infrastructure. Limiting abuse of that infrastructure by some people against others, is authoritarianism. It is the majority population using its collectively greater power to defend itself from such abuses. This is not the same as conservatives who ban speech or displays of nudity on the grounds that they are against God's will.

When Janet has a wardrobe malfunction seen by a million people, that depends on public resources and infrastructure too. What the heck is the difference between the majority using its collectively greater power to stop individuals from stripping in public and the majority using its collectively greater power to stop individuals from speaking in a way that is disparaging about anyone or any group? What makes one of those applications of power authoritarian and the other not, apart from you labelling one of the prohibited actions "abuse of that infrastructure" and not the other?

Such regulations have the same intent and general justification as regulations against robbery and physical assault. Unlike conservative supported laws, they are not merely designed to prohibit acts because they deviate from the norm, personal tastes, or what some authority prefers, but to protect individual citizens from abuse by other citizens.

I see, when a biker rides without a helmet he's abusing other individual citizens, and they're protecting themselves from him rather than just imposing their preferences on him.

Whether all such regulations are accurate in their assumptions about the harm done is a separate issue.

Good to know. I'm pretty sure if you ask a conservative about the abortion rules he wants, he's going to tell you abortion does harm to others. Since whether that's accurate in its assumptions is a separate issue, I take it you're going to stipulate that he's being no more authoritarian than the "liberal" who favors the helmet law, right? Or is the exercise of power by the authorities authoritarian when you don't approve of the restrictions and not authoritarian when you do approve of them?

It isn't conservatives banning me from selling my house unless I rip out my fence and put in a new one because my current fence conforms to the old code and they enacted a new code.

That isn't liberals doing that either. Most liberals either don't know or don't support such laws. That is byproduct of mindless application of bureaucracy.

The bureaucrats take their direction from the elected authorities. The elected authorities are chosen by the people you call "liberals". I live in Santa Cruz county, one of the most left-leaning districts in the country. (The good news is, I haven't replaced my fence yet. If I had, I'd be doubly screwed. I found out this morning that they just changed the code again!)

But again, building code regulations are rooted in the principle of protecting the commons and their own safety which can be harmed by reckless workmanship.

Hmm, yes, I can totally see how the commons and their own safety will be protected by a 5-foot fence but wouldn't have been protected by a 4-foot fence.

Are there absurd abuses of this system and mindless misapplication of rules? Sure, but that is not what is more supported by liberals.

I.e., the conservatives are a bunch of petty tyrants on purpose, while the so-called "liberals" genuinely mean well and are only a bunch of petty tyrants by accident? So the observation that insanity after insanity are attacks on property rights rather than on sex rights, and they come from people ideologically contemptuous of property rights rather than from people ideologically contemptuous of sex rights, is just a coincidence?

Conservatives care about liberty. They just don't think getting to do stuff conservatives disapprove of counts toward real liberty. In this respect they're completely and totally different from "liberals", because when "liberals" think getting to do certain stuff doesn't count toward real liberty, it's totally different stuff.

 

[doubtingt]

I corrected your statement, so that is has some validity and is no longer clearly refuted by all the relevant scientific evidence, including the study in question and also hundreds of others over several decades. The are a small % of the most extreme "liberals" who are essentially marxists and/or seek to coerce equality of outcomes via authoritarian means that go beyond policing injustice to treating individual unjustly to achieve group-level equality of outcomes. These are not a "great majority" of self labeled liberals, but a minority of them.

Huh. I distinctly recall writing "social democrats". And hey, there it is in the quoted text. And yet you seem to have read it as "socialists". Are you under the impression that there isn't anything in the political spectrum between liberals and people who are essentially marxists?
The trouble is, terminology is massively screwed up in the U.S. We had a McCarthyism outbreak, vanilla social democrats were getting tarred as communists, a lot of them renamed themselves "liberals" in self-defense, and this dragged Americans' impression of the word "liberal" leftward. In Europe the original meanings survived better. There are still little Liberal parties for the surviving smattering of liberals to vote for, while the bulk of the people who'd get called "liberal" in the U.S. vote Social Democrat or Labour or whatever their country's equivalent is.

The study in question is about self-labeled "liberals" (and thus people who vote mostly Democrat) within the modern US. How terms are used elsewhere and in different times is not relevant. Science is not about words, but about actual objects and organism, which is why operational definitions are all that matter.
Your description applies only to a small % of the more extremist liberals whose willingness to use force and coercion to regulate personal lives begins to approach (but still does not reach) the level of authoritarianism of the the typical and average conservative. IOW, people that label "liberal" but are full on socialist or communists are the only liberals whose authoritarianism is even close to that of mainstream conservatives.

For example, popular support for state censoring of speech and images on the grounds that it is offensive is significantly stronger among social conservatives than social liberals. It is not just a matter of the content of the speech. Censorship of curse words, "unpatriotic" acts, deviant sexuality, and nudity get far more support from conservatives than any form of censorship for anything gets from liberals.

So who are the constituents for all the hate speech codes?

A small minority of extremist "liberals" who are actually closer to full blown socialists and communists. Which is why such codes have insufficient support to make it into law outside of some college campuses, and why the very liberal ACLU supported mostly by Democrats and liberals oppose most hate speech codes.

In addition, liberals strongest opposition to speech is when it is used as an act of oppression and to support authoritarian inequalities, unlike conservatives who oppose speech that is not disparaging about anyone or any group but merely expresses personal feelings about objects, government policies, events, or is an expression of love.

So censorship doesn't count as authoritarian if it's for a good cause?

Does a cop shooting a serial killer in order to protect the next victim count as equally authoritarian as a cop shooting a man for having consensual sex with another man in his own bed, or for refusing to pray to God? IF you don't grasp how the motive and goal behind an act determines its authoritarianism, then you have no idea what the concept refers to. It isn't about the cause being "good", but being about protecting one person from being victimized by another, versus protecting the rules themselves and the will of the authority that are about control and limiting freedom and not about protecting others.

When you examine the kinds of authorities that social democrats recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial and whose goal is to either preserve or create clear imbalances of power via non-hierarchical systems;

You cannot have imbalance of power in a non-hierarchical system. By definition, a hierarchy is system with an imbalance of power/worth/authority. IF a system has an imbalance of power, it is by definition hierarchical. <insult snipped>

Of course you can have an imbalance of power in a non-hierarchical system. That's what "majority rule" means. No, that is not an imbalance of power between persons in the system. That is just a bunch of people with equal power to each other, and a difference in how many people use their power to favor one position rather than another. There is no systemic power imbalance.

The whole point is that nobody's vote counts more than anybody else's and yet the power doesn't balance -- those in the majority get what they want and those in the majority have to do as they're told.

There is no difference in power. More power means ability to determine the outcome, not whether the outcome determined mostly by other people just happens to be the one you prefer. By your twisted notion of power imbalance, a slave with no vote who happens to agree with an elected official has more "power" in a society than than the elected officials spouse and employer who happen to disagree with the official on an issue, but they not only can vote but they have social and economic influence over the official. That is absurd. These latter people had much greater power to impact the outcome than the slave, but differences in power don't always mean that things always go how the more powerful people prefer. In sum, you are wrongly equating whether a person likes then outcome of a system with whether they had the power to determine that outcome.

and "authoritarian" doesn't mean a moral preference for creating and preserving hierarchical power structures, just a moral preference for creating and preserving power structures.

Yes, by definition authoritarian requires deference to authority, which can only exist if some people have more power than others, which is the definition of a hierarchy.

If you want to call 51% getting to order the other 49% around a "hierarchy", suit yourself.

I am not saying that is a hierarchy, because their is no systemic power imbalance there. The people who happen to be in the 51% have no more power to determine the outcome of the system than those in the 49%, they just happen to agree with slightly more of the other people who all had equal power. In fact, again, a slave that had no vote could just as easily agree with the 51% and benefit from the outcome. By your conception that slave has more power than all the 49% of people who voted the other way combined, even though they all had far more opportunity to determine the outcome. Pretty silly.

When you examine the kinds of authorities that the social democrats you call "liberals" recognize, they are the kind that are themselves very authoritarian and dictatorial and whose goal is to either preserve or create clear imbalances of power via systems that are authoritarian whether you choose to label them hierarchical or not. It wasn't the conservatives on the Supreme Court who ruled that the government can ban a citizen from smoking pot she grew on her own land without ever buying or selling it, using the excuse that they were "regulating interstate commerce". It was the so-called "liberals" who did that.

So, now you are claiming that self-labeled liberals are more likely than conservatives to support the illegality of and harsh penalties for smoking pot? Every bit of scientific data shows you are wrong. Cherry picking isolated instances where some tiny non-representative sub-sample of liberals act like conservatives usually act doesn't support your claim. It is intellectually identical to pointing to your 90 year old uncle who smokes 3 cigars a day as evidence that smoking has no positive association with cancer or any health problems.

It isn't conservatives making cheap light-bulbs and decently performing shower-heads illegal. It isn't conservatives telling bikers what to wear around their heads.

These things are not merely personal acts, but have a real impact upon others and upon commonly shared and paid for infrastructure and resources.

I'm not sure how pumping water out of my well, showering, and pouring the water into my septic tank, from which it filters back down into the groundwater, has a real impact upon others and upon commonly shared and paid for infrastructure and resources;

Then you don't understand much about groundwater. Your comment is only slightly less ignorant that saying "I don't see how the pollutants I dump in the stream in my backyard have any impact on people drinking from it down stream."

All economic exchanges of goods impact and depend upon public resources and infrastructure. Limiting abuse of that infrastructure by some people against others, is authoritarianism. It is the majority population using its collectively greater power to defend itself from such abuses. This is not the same as conservatives who ban speech or displays of nudity on the grounds that they are against God's will.

When Janet has a wardrobe malfunction seen by a million people, that depends on public resources and infrastructure too.

It does not cause any actual damage or wear on those resources paid for by taxes or of the sort that physically harms others via damaging the physical environment.

What the heck is the difference between the majority using its collectively greater power to stop individuals from stripping in public and the majority using its collectively greater power to stop individuals from speaking in a way that is disparaging about anyone or any group?

First, few liberals support hate speech laws, which is why there are almost no such laws. In contrast, there is a massive government machinery that constantly restricts naughty words directed at no one and nudity, because most conservatives support such authoritarian restrictions. Second, hate speech is a deliberate act of aggression for the sole purpose of intimidating and threatening others, and much of it was very recently used as part of a systemic effort to cause real harm to others body and property on the grounds that they belong to the group to which the hate speech directly refers. IOW, hate speech has usually been and still often is a component of authoritarian oppression. Efforts to curb hate speech via non-legal means are a noble act to quell a very real part of efforts to do others direct bodily harm. Efforts to bring the law into it are largely misguided over-extensions of this that are willing to tolerate authoritarian methods as a means to reduce harm to others. In contrast "foul" language like "God Damn" and "shit" and images of breasts were not created as and are rarely used as part of a deliberate aggressive attack and intimidation against those who hear or see it. The emotional content of the words "shit" and "shoot" are identical and the fact that one is legal and the other not is a purely arbitrary act for the sole purpose of authoritarian control. They are not said to harm but to express emotion, usually having nothing to do with another person. Any offense is manufactured and solely a byproduct of the listener inventing a reason to be offended, and the objection is nothing more than "it is wrong to say, because I arbitrarily say its wrong to say."
Once again you demonstrate your lack of understanding of what authoritarianism is and that you treat it as an all or nothing dichotomy where motive is irrelevant and the sole feature is any all form of restriction imposed upon any type of action for any reason.

Such regulations have the same intent and general justification as regulations against robbery and physical assault. Unlike conservative supported laws, they are not merely designed to prohibit acts because they deviate from the norm, personal tastes, or what some authority prefers, but to protect individual citizens from abuse by other citizens.

I see, when a biker rides without a helmet he's abusing other individual citizens, and they're protecting themselves from him rather than just imposing their preferences on him.

In a purely fictional world where extreme health care costs had no real impact upon others and were never covered by safety net programs, then you'd be correct that wearing a helmet has zero impact on other people's property. But that is not the real world and no civilized society can exist without a safety net and just let people in accidents bleed out in the street like roadkill. The reason

It isn't conservatives banning me from selling my house unless I rip out my fence and put in a new one because my current fence conforms to the old code and they enacted a new code.

That isn't liberals doing that either. Most liberals either don't know or don't support such laws. That is byproduct of mindless application of bureaucracy.

The bureaucrats take their direction from the elected authorities. The elected authorities are chosen by the people you call "liberals". I live in Santa Cruz county, one of the most left-leaning districts in the country.

IOW, you just admitted that you are referring to a small extremist subset of liberals. BTW, I bet most liberals even in Santa Cruz object to numerous building code applications, or would except that 90% of people have no clue about 90% of building codes. So they cannot possibly be the ones pushing for those specific codes.

But again, building code regulations are rooted in the principle of protecting the commons and their own safety which can be harmed by reckless workmanship.

Hmm, yes, I can totally see how the commons and their own safety will be protected by a 5-foot fence but wouldn't have been protected by a 4-foot fence.

Show me any evidence that the majority of liberals support a 5 foot fence code over a 4 foot fence code. How a specific safety code regulation is enacted and enforced is separate from the general principle that building codes are warranted on the grounds of real and direct threats to public safety.
Only the latter is more supported by liberals, with the aim of things like electrical codes that prevent you from recklessly starting a fire that burns down the city of Chicago. All regulations can be abused by incompetent or malicious individual enforcers and has little to do with political ideology, but personal self-interest.
Your form of argument is equal to saying that if Obama sent in the military to confiscate all guns from Americans, that it would actually be conservatives that support this action since they more strongly support the use of the military in general.

Are there absurd abuses of this system and mindless misapplication of rules? Sure, but that is not what is more supported by liberals.

I.e., the conservatives are a bunch of petty tyrants on purpose, while the so-called "liberals" genuinely mean well and are only a bunch of petty tyrants by accident?

Close. The core principle behind most conservative restrictions on liberty is that authoritarian order is preferable and that their personal tastes (and that of their tyranical God) are more than sufficient justification for preventing people from doing things with zero objective harm to others. In fact it isn't just restrictions they favor, by forced action and forced belief, which is what the pledge of allegiance and school/government prayer are entirely about (find me a corresponding example of most liberals supporting all people being forced to swear allegiance to an abstract idea).

So the observation that insanity after insanity are attacks on property rights rather than on sex rights,

No attack on property rights widely supported by liberals comes close to being as insane and for the sole purpose of anti-liberty control as widely supported conservative attacks on private sexual acts, peaceful protest, the female body, and forced belief and allegiance to God and their conception of "one nation" that is under his authority.
A persons body and mind are unambiguously theirs to which they were born and are not their "property" but rather are the very definition of what they are as a person from which it is logically and scientifically impossible to separate them. Thus efforts to control mind and body are by far the most extreme form of authoritarianism and control of another person. Personal property is a purely legal creation, as evidenced by the fact that it is impossible to determine or have any agreement about who owns a property in the absence of legal documentation. In virtually cases, at some point in the past and the future either the person existed without ownership of any property in question and/or the property existed when the person did not. This is not true of a person's body and mind, because they are definitionally inseparable and one cannot exist without the other. This not only highlights the extreme inherent difference between what it means to impact a persons body/mind versus property, but highlights that unlike body/mind rights, property ownership is a more inherently fluid, unstable, changing, and thus ambiguous concept. Therefore, unlike with body/mind control, disagreements over rights related to property need not and usually do not hinge upon differences in deference to the right of authorities to control the a person.

and they come from people ideologically contemptuous of property rights rather than from people ideologically contemptuous of sex rights, is just a coincidence?

Bullshit. Most liberals, including myself are not "contemptuous of property rights" as a legal principle, and in fact strongly support the existence of private property and often object to unjust violations of property ownership. Again, your characterization refers solely to a tiny fraction of modern American "liberals" and only to extremist socialists and Marxists. Most liberals simply do not share your and other conservatives infantile notion of ownership the fiction of "created" wealth" that ignores the necessity of public common ownership of some things and ignores how private ownership of things and the very manufacture/distribution of those things impacts (and often harms) other people and those publicly owned resources. About the only time conservatives care about harm done to others in the acquisition of property is when a black guy uses direct violence against a white person to take their property. Most of the harm and the most serious harm done in the acquisition of property is not of this sort and of no concern to conservatives, because it is usually powerful white men that benefit (who conservatives generally feel are the most deserving and at the top of the hierarchy of innate worth) .

Conservatives care about liberty. They just don't think getting to do stuff conservatives disapprove of counts toward real liberty.

Sorry, but conservatives don't get to define making the country free of gays as "liberty". You can abuse the word itself all you want, but what the concept liberty refers to and what the violation of it is is not a matter of subjective opinion. A person's mind and body is more objectively part of the person themself than their property which only exists based on legal definition. Thus, restricting body and mind is objectively a greater disregard for liberty than restricting property. Also, protecting people from victimization is the protection of their liberty, thus restrictions of actions to protect objective harm to others is as much a protection of as a restriction of liberty. In contrast, when restrictions have no basis in internally coherent principles of preventing objective harm and are largely arbitrary rules at the whim of authority (which most conservative restrictions are), then they are nothing but a disdain for liberty for the sake of authoritarian control in itself.

 

[Bomb#20]

Your description applies only to a small % of the more extremist liberals whose willingness to use force and coercion to regulate personal lives begins to approach (but still does not reach) the level of authoritarianism of the the typical and average conservative. IOW, people that label "liberal" but are full on socialist or communists are the only liberals whose authoritarianism is even close to that of mainstream conservatives.

Making people live a certain way is transparently something you don't perceive as authoritarian unless it's a way you don't want people to have to live. You're simply defining the impositions of conservatives as "personal" and the impositions of non-socialist self-described "liberals" as "non-personal".

For example, popular support for state censoring of speech and images on the grounds that it is offensive is significantly stronger among social conservatives than social liberals. It is not just a matter of the content of the speech. Censorship of curse words, "unpatriotic" acts, deviant sexuality, and nudity get far more support from conservatives than any form of censorship for anything gets from liberals.

So who are the constituents for all the hate speech codes?

A small minority of extremist "liberals" who are actually closer to full blown socialists and communists. Which is why such codes have insufficient support to make it into law outside of some college campuses,

That's implausible -- there aren't enough full blown socialists and communists even in academia to outvote the great mass of self-described "liberals". Moreover, such codes certainly do have sufficient support to make it into law. Not in the U.S., where the First Amendment means making it into law takes more than just sufficient support; but Canada has prosecuted and fined people for hate speech; in Europe people have been jailed. And no, Canada and Europe aren't ruled by communists.

and why the very liberal ACLU supported mostly by Democrats and liberals oppose most hate speech codes.

That varies regionally. A friend of mine got shunned out of the Northern California chapter for being unwilling to compromise on free speech rights for homophobes.

In addition, liberals strongest opposition to speech is when it is used as an act of oppression and to support authoritarian inequalities, unlike conservatives who oppose speech that is not disparaging about anyone or any group but merely expresses personal feelings about objects, government policies, events, or is an expression of love.

So censorship doesn't count as authoritarian if it's for a good cause?

Does a cop shooting a serial killer in order to protect the next victim count as equally authoritarian as a cop shooting a man for having consensual sex with another man in his own bed, or for refusing to pray to God? IF you don't grasp how the motive and goal behind an act determines its authoritarianism, then you have no idea what the concept refers to. It isn't about the cause being "good", but being about protecting one person from being victimized by another, versus protecting the rules themselves and the will of the authority that are about control and limiting freedom and not about protecting others.

Oh for gods' sake! You can't make censorship non-authoritarian by changing the subject to shooting people! You're doing that so you can use "victim" as a card that trumps "authoritarian". Well, when a serial killer kills, the guy he killed is dead. When a preacher quotes the Bible saying gays are an abomination, some gays have hurt feelings. When they react by getting the government to haul his ass in front of a judge, who orders him to shut up and confiscates thousands of his dollars, they hurt him far worse than he hurt them. The preacher is the victim.

In any event, speech as an act of oppression is hardly the kind so-called "liberals" oppose the most. Whether such speech should be censored is a subject of major disagreement among self-described liberals. Lots of people on the political left think racists and homophobes should be allowed their say. No, self-described liberals' strongest opposition to speech is when it's used to persuade people to vote a certain way. Calls for hate speech laws were dwarfed be the amount -- and the consistency -- of outrage over Citizens United v FEC. That was denounced over and over in many FRDB threads. Apart from me, there was hardly a self-described liberal there arguing that the government has no right to suppress a "Here's why we're against Hillary" movie. Nearly everybody arguing for censorship on TFT/FRDB is a self-described liberal. I don't recall ever seeing a conservative here advocating censorship of expression of personal feelings about objects, government policies, events, or expression of love. What I've seen them want to censor is incitement to violence and copyright infringement; and the self-described liberals mostly agree with them about those two cases. (Granted, since these fora cater to atheists we probably get a better class of conservative than average here.)

So, do you have an argument for why Congress ordering people not to advertise their political movie qualifies as "non-authoritarian".

Of course you can have an imbalance of power in a non-hierarchical system. That's what "majority rule" means.

No, that is not an imbalance of power between persons in the system. That is just a bunch of people with equal power to each other, and a difference in how many people use their power to favor one position rather than another. There is no systemic power imbalance.

Lebanon used to have a system of government based on a power balance. "Power balance" doesn't mean the Christians had to do whatever the Muslim majority told them to do. "Power balance" means each group was powerful enough to keep the other group from oppressing them.

The whole point is that nobody's vote counts more than anybody else's and yet the power doesn't balance -- those in the majority get what they want and those in the majority have to do as they're told.

There is no difference in power. More power means ability to determine the outcome, not whether the outcome determined mostly by other people just happens to be the one you prefer. By your twisted notion of power imbalance, a slave with no vote who happens to agree with an elected official has more "power" in a society than than the elected officials spouse and employer who happen to disagree with the official on an issue, but they not only can vote but they have social and economic influence over the official. That is absurd.

Yes, that is absurd. That isn't my notion. That's your notion. You made it up, based on nothing I said, and imputed it to me. Don't do that.

Majority rule means 51% can violate the rights of 20% if they choose to. If they do so, that makes those 51% authoritarian oppressors. If the remaining 29% consist of 14% who voted against the oppression, 10% who are slaves with no vote who disagree with the oppression, and 5% who are slaves with no vote who agree with the oppression, that doesn't mean the 5% have power or are authoritarian oppressors. But the fact that those slaves were able to agree with the oppression without being part of a power imbalance does not imply that the 51% were able to vote for the oppression without being part of a power imbalance. Agreeing is not an exercise of power. Voting is an exercise of power. See how it works?

What you are arguing is equivalent to claiming that a scale with a ten-gram weight on one side and a five-gram weight on the other side is out of balance, but a scale with ten one-gram weights on one side and five one-gram weights on the other side is balanced.

If you want to call 51% getting to order the other 49% around a "hierarchy", suit yourself.

I am not saying that is a hierarchy, because their is no systemic power imbalance there. The people who happen to be in the 51% have no more power to determine the outcome of the system than those in the 49%, they just happen to agree with slightly more of the other people who all had equal power.

No, they do not just happen to agree with slightly more of the other people. They just happen to vote with slightly more of the other people. Not the same thing at all.

It wasn't the conservatives on the Supreme Court who ruled that the government can ban a citizen from smoking pot she grew on her own land without ever buying or selling it, using the excuse that they were "regulating interstate commerce". It was the so-called "liberals" who did that.

So, now you are claiming that self-labeled liberals are more likely than conservatives to support the illegality of and harsh penalties for smoking pot? Every bit of scientific data shows you are wrong.

Oh for the love of god! Are you trying not to understand? Self-labeled liberals are more likely to approve of the reasoning processes those judges relied on to reach their decision. Self-labeled liberals are more likely to support the "expansive interpretation" of the interstate commerce clause. Self-labeled liberals are more likely to support federal disregard for the enumerated powers principle. Self-labeled liberals are more likely to support the Supreme Court deciding cases based on policy considerations rather than the text of laws.

Cherry picking isolated instances where some tiny non-representative sub-sample of liberals act like conservatives usually act doesn't support your claim. It is intellectually identical to pointing to your 90 year old uncle who smokes 3 cigars a day as evidence that smoking has no positive association with cancer or any health problems.

Don't you get it? They were not acting like conservatives! Three out of four conservatives dissented, on the grounds that state law should prevail. The conservatives were acting like conservatives; the "liberals" were acting like social democrats. Their votes on this matter were entirely consistent with their voting behavior in other cases. Stevens voted for prohibition for exactly the same reason he voted for censorship. He thought beating back "states' rights" was what was best for the country, just as he thought cutting down on political spending was what was best for the country.

I'm not sure how pumping water out of my well, showering, and pouring the water into my septic tank, from which it filters back down into the groundwater, has a real impact upon others and upon commonly shared and paid for infrastructure and resources;

Then you don't understand much about groundwater. Your comment is only slightly less ignorant that saying "I don't see how the pollutants I dump in the stream in my backyard have any impact on people drinking from it down stream."

Then you don't understand much about septic tanks. Your comment is only slightly less ignorant than saying "A septic tank is a cesspool." They're water treatment systems. The whole point is that the bacteria in them breaks down the pollutants. Moreover, in my area whatever impurities are left are subjected to two hundred feet of filtration before they reach wellwater level. Moreover, a stronger shower does not emit more dirt or more soap from the plumbing; it just dilutes them more -- you might as well tell me how ignorant I am for saying "I don't see how 2 gallons of a 1 molar solution is more poluting than 1 gallon of a 2 molar solution."

When Janet has a wardrobe malfunction seen by a million people, that depends on public resources and infrastructure too.

It does not cause any actual damage or wear on those resources paid for by taxes or of the sort that physically harms others via damaging the physical environment.

So? Using extra water or extra electricity with the shower head or lightbulb you prefer does not cause any actual damage or wear on those resources that isn't compensated for by the extra money you pay on your water or electricity bill, if the utilities are priced appropriately. The public micromanaging how you use the stuff you buy instead of just charging you for the amount you use is an excercise of preference by the public, not an act of self defense. They do it because as owners of the utilities, they get to. Likewise, micromanaging what people wear while being broadcast is also a preference the public exercises because as owners of the airwaves, they get to. The voters keep voting for legislators who disapprove of public nudity and private hard showers. You might as well claim that if the public bans us from eating chocolate it wouldn't be authoritarian because chocolate is delivered on trucks that cause wear and tear on the public roads.

What the heck is the difference between the majority using its collectively greater power to stop individuals from stripping in public and the majority using its collectively greater power to stop individuals from speaking in a way that is disparaging about anyone or any group?

First, few liberals support hate speech laws, which is why there are almost no such laws.

First, no liberals support hate speech laws. Second, since you are contending that few of the Americans you call "liberals" support hate speech laws, what evidence do you have that there is a massive difference of opinion on this topic between the American left and the Canadian/European left? The more numerous American non-left and the stronger American constitutional protection for free speech rights are a more parsimonious explanation for there being almost no such laws here.

The emotional content of the words...are identical and the fact that one is legal and the other not is a purely arbitrary act for the sole purpose of authoritarian control. ... Any offense is manufactured and solely a byproduct of the listener inventing a reason to be offended...

That's ridiculous. People say the "foul" words because they're foul -- because violating a taboo releases emotions that obeying a taboo doesn't. And the offense is learned from culture -- it's usually acquired in childhood from exposure to adults who had themselves acquired it in childhood. The person upset at hearing the word isn't inventing a damn thing; it's just how his brain has been washed. That doesn't make the upsetness any less real -- or any more purposeful, for the sole purpose of authoritarian control or for any other purpose.

Once again you demonstrate your lack of understanding of what authoritarianism is and that you treat it as an all or nothing dichotomy where motive is irrelevant and the sole feature is any all form of restriction imposed upon any type of action for any reason.

You have zero basis in anything I wrote for making that accusation. Once again you demonstrate your lack of understanding that you are not an authority on what I think. Some restictions are obviously not authoritarian; others obviously are; the fact that I draw that line in a different place from you and do not recognize as good reasons some of the reasons you think are good reasons does not entitle you to invent positions for me.

I see, when a biker rides without a helmet he's abusing other individual citizens, and they're protecting themselves from him rather than just imposing their preferences on him.

In a purely fictional world where extreme health care costs had no real impact upon others and were never covered by safety net programs, then you'd be correct that wearing a helmet has zero impact on other people's property. But that is not the real world and no civilized society can exist without a safety net and just let people in accidents bleed out in the street like roadkill.

You say that as though the fact that there's a safety net is a law of physics and/or an imposition on society by the biker. It's a choice the civilized society makes for itself. So when they make him wear a helmet, they are not protecting themselves from him. They're protecting themselves from their own choice to spend their money on him. Claiming this is sufficient to give them the right to tell him how to live his life is no different from people deciding that no civilized society can exist without public financing of churches -- lots of European countries have done so -- and then inferring from your reasoning procedure that starting a new religion is abusing other citizens because they'll have to spend their money to build another church, and therefore it's non-authoritarian to limit everyone to picking one of the society's preexisting religions.

For that matter, it's no different from the old Soviet excuse for banning emigration -- they argued that the nation had spent a lot of resources educating a worker and had to get a return on its investment in him.

(Is this the point where you claim I'm in favor of letting people bleed out in the street like roadkill?)

I live in Santa Cruz county, one of the most left-leaning districts in the country.

IOW, you just admitted that you are referring to a small extremist subset of liberals.

Oh, please! You seriously think being one of the most left-leaning districts in America means it's full of near-communists? The so-called liberals here may be a little bit further left on average; but it mostly just means there are a lot fewer conservatives and libertarians and centrists and actual liberals here, balancing out the so-called liberals, than most districts have.

I.e., the conservatives are a bunch of petty tyrants on purpose, while the so-called "liberals" genuinely mean well and are only a bunch of petty tyrants by accident?

Close. The core principle behind most conservative restrictions on liberty is that authoritarian order is preferable and that their personal tastes (and that of their tyranical God) are more than sufficient justification for preventing people from doing things with zero objective harm to others.

So are a lot of so-called "liberal" restrictions on liberty. Rules against GMOs are only the most blatant example. Granted, the so-called "liberals" believe these things harm others, based on some metaphysical delusion; are you giving them a pass because of that? If you are, I'll bet if you asked a conservative about any particular one of the restrictions he prefers, he'd insist that it wasn't only about order and his personal tastes, and would likewise offer some delusional theory for how the activity is harmful. Try listening to conservatives with an anthropological rather than a political frame of mind; you'll find for the most part they genuinely mean well too.

In fact it isn't just restrictions they favor, by forced action and forced belief, which is what the pledge of allegiance and school/government prayer are entirely about (find me a corresponding example of most liberals supporting all people being forced to swear allegiance to an abstract idea).

Funny story about that -- the Pledge of Allegiance was invented by a socialist. But yes, times change and compulsory loyalty oaths are now a conservative thing. The left does its loyalty oaths by social pressure. As far as prayer goes, I haven't heard any conservatives advocating having the government make people say them.

So the observation that insanity after insanity are attacks on property rights rather than on sex rights,

No attack on property rights widely supported by liberals comes close to being as insane and for the sole purpose of anti-liberty control as widely supported conservative attacks on private sexual acts, peaceful protest, the female body, and forced belief and allegiance to God and their conception of "one nation" that is under his authority.

No? Do you have statistics? What fraction of American conservatives favor forced belief and allegiance to God? What fraction of so-called liberals favor a maximum wage?

... Thus efforts to control mind and body are by far the most extreme form of authoritarianism and control of another person. ... This not only highlights the extreme inherent difference between what it means to impact a persons body/mind versus property, but highlights that unlike body/mind rights, property ownership is a more inherently fluid, unstable, changing, and thus ambiguous concept. Therefore, unlike with body/mind control, disagreements over rights related to property need not and usually do not hinge upon differences in deference to the right of authorities to control the a person.

In a purely fictional world where it doesn't take property and trade to go about the activities of normal life, you'd be correct that there's an extreme inherent difference between what it means to impact a persons body/mind versus property. But that is not the real world.

In the real world, if the authorities tell people they can advertise their political movie to their hearts' content just as long as they don't spend their money to do so until after the election is over, is it your contention that this only gives the authorities control over property, and the authorities aren't exercising any power over voters' minds?

and they come from people ideologically contemptuous of property rights rather than from people ideologically contemptuous of sex rights, is just a coincidence?

Most liberals, including myself are not "contemptuous of property rights" as a legal principle, and in fact strongly support the existence of private property and often object to unjust violations of property ownership.

"The redistribution of wealth within that system is partially a correction for the inherent unfairness and greedy unethical abuses that occur when people are allowed to use that infrastructure and resources and negotiate exchanges with other parties in that society with minimal regulation or direct oversight."

"Profit is taking from people more in value than the other party receives from you. Any motive to increase profit is thus a motive to do things that make the other party willing to give you more in value than you give them, which is psychologically implausible unless the other party wrongly believes they are getting equal or greater value than what they give."

You're arguing that whenever two people agree to swap their stuff, one of them will almost certainly be scamming the other unless some anointed third party decides the terms of the trade for them; failing that, some anointed third party should redress the crime by taking some property away from one of them. So are you going to explain how a conservative who thinks his god should be in charge of whose johnson goes into whose orifice is being respectful of other people's sexual rights? Or are you going to offer a steaming pile of special pleading fallacies for why when you put your "value" metaphysics in charge of other people's trades, that's totally different and not at all contempt for their property rights?

Again, your characterization refers solely to a tiny fraction of modern American "liberals" and only to extremist socialists and Marxists. Most liberals simply do not share your and other conservatives infantile notion of ownership the fiction of "created" wealth" that ignores the necessity of public common ownership of some things and ignores how private ownership of things and the very manufacture/distribution of those things impacts (and often harms) other people and those publicly owned resources.

In the first place, anybody who believes profit is by definition a scam has no business accusing others' notions of being infantile.

In the second place, where the bejesus did I suggest there's no necessity of public common ownership of some things, or claim private ownership and/or manufacture and distribution can't harm other people? Yet again you are simply making up opinions out of whole cloth and imputing them to me.

And in the third place, you're calling me a conservative, why? Have I been complaining about disloyalty, subversion of authority, or degradation of something that should be sanctified? Have I been calling porn stars immoral sluts, and opposing abortion, period? Have I been opposing legal prostitution because I value keeping the sinful act illegal? Did I advocate obedience to dictatorial authority? Have I said something anti-homosexual? Did I support censorship of curse words, "unpatriotic" acts, deviant sexuality, and nudity? Does my denunciation of more things as authoritarian than you regard as authoritarian mean I oppose human liberty? Is my perception that "If you do X, my decision to do Y will cost me; therefore you're not allowed to do X." policies are unfair to the people banned from doing X somehow proof that I don't really care about fairness as a principle? Did I miss any of your caricatures of conservatives?

About the only time conservatives care about harm done to others in the acquisition of property is when a black guy uses direct violence against a white person to take their property.

Ah, I see I did miss one. You're calling me a conservative and you're claiming conservatives are racists. What the hell makes you think painting your opponents as cartoon villains is a reasonable debating tactic?

Conservatives care about liberty. They just don't think getting to do stuff conservatives disapprove of counts toward real liberty.

Sorry, but conservatives don't get to define making the country free of gays as "liberty".

Duh! The point is, so-called "liberals" don't get to define making the country free of unhelmeted bikers as "liberty" either.

You can abuse the word itself all you want, but what the concept liberty refers to and what the violation of it is is not a matter of subjective opinion. A person's mind and body is more objectively part of the person themself than their property which only exists based on legal definition. Thus, restricting body and mind is objectively a greater disregard for liberty than restricting property.

And so you justify to yourselves stripping property rights out of the word the same way conservatives justify to themselves stripping sexual rights out of it: with metaphysical abstractions that ignore reality. Property rights are a practical necessity for the exercise of mind rights and body rights. Back when the PRI had a monopoly on power for seventy years, they guaranteed freedom of the press. Newspapers that printed stories they didn't like generally didn't get busted up by the cops and their editors generally didn't get jailed. They just stopped getting deliveries of ink and newsprint, on the sale of which the PRI enforced a government monopoly.

Without property rights, an authority can use its control of all the stuff around mind and body to hem in mind and body as much as it pleases. If going through the charade of only touching the surrounding stuff while keeping their hands politely off their subjects' minds and bodies themselves is enough to make rulers non-authoritarian, then Augustus going through the charade of submitting his decrees to Senate vote was enough to make the Roman Empire a democracy.

 

[fromderinside]

I did't interposes my subjective views so why you attack along those lines doesn't seem relevant. My point is the study isn't about morality.

Your claim that it isn't about morality is not rooted in a scientific/psychological definition of the concept, but in your own subjective feelings on what should be considered a moral issue. You present no scientific definition of morality by which you have any basis to claim their operational definition of it is invalid. Your reject of it is based on pure subjective emotion.

Their 'operational' definition has no basis in materiality. I'm thinking this study is following a Stevens or Skinner view of what is meant by operational definition rather than what the originator of operational definition philosopher Physicist Percy William Bridgman defined it. (check out a snapshot of this schism in section 1.4 of Stand for Encyclopedia article on Operationalism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/ . I read the Graham article in full ( http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~jessegra/papers/Science-2014-Graham-1242.pdf )and methods were basically hand waved. So I checked another article which included graham and included reference to this article which advertised a discussion on methodology Political Psychology http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~jessegra/papers/Stone et al.Political Psychology review.pdf. My reading of this article confirms my this is Skinner and Stevens on steroids. We might as well be Using Hulls rat turds.

It's about what some liberal chaps consider liberal and conservative construction of what they consider moral what is political not moral analysis.

Wrong. First, you have zero evidence of the authors politics. Second, they used methods that allowed liberals and conservatives to say what they themselves viewed as moral issues. The participants were asked to report events they experienced that they viewed as involving moral or immoral acts, however the participants chose to interpret the concept of morality. Unlike you, they operated under an objectively and psychologically defined concept of morality, and this is the scientifically valid way to study it, since morality is nothing but a subjective state of preference, it is most valid to define whether something is a moral issue by the subjective moral judgments of each person.

When it comes to objective I believe I, as a retired published psychophysicist (yeah, appeal to authority which I believe you'll see the validity in the articles I chose above), have a rather better idea of what is meant by objective re operations than do those. Correlation studies of subjective experience don't satisfy my view of either objective or science.

Anyway the study misses the main issue, the effects of local environments with respect to one's moral concept of the world. See, I'd just rather work outside the individual or group. Makes me happy.

Note the emotion in your statement, which is your basis for dismissing the study, not any scientifically valid critique, nor any evidence of bias on their part. How local environments shape morality is "a" different question, but not "the main issue". Again, that is a purely subjective and non-scientific judgment on your part. What they are examining is how people who align themselves with parties, candidates, and policies that are generally labelled "conservative" and "liberal" differ from each other in the kinds of things they view as moral and immoral acts in everyday life. It helps to understand the core values and motives underlying support for various parties and policies. What you are asking is how environments shape what core values and motives people have. It is a different, but no more objectively valid or important question.

As for scientifically valid critique I refer you to the articles I provided above. My emotional view is that this stuff is about as good as tomorrow's opinion pages in the times.

As for what these people are doing was attempting to get numbers for party alignment. there isn't enough information in the Graham article to suggest the scope and direction of their instructions to the observers who were to write down. The review article was no better except it did provide insight to political survey metrics. Think about it. We are still trying to operationalize questions on SAT and ACT which are very advanced psychometric techniques and we haven't gotten much beyond nominal data.

This stuff is way too shallow for us to was time.