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.