| > This is a flaw I see in the libertarian worldview. There's an under-appreciation of unpredictable spillover consequences. In my view, sometimes rights and freedoms need to be violated in order to protect those rights and freedoms. It's not that I want violations of freedoms, it's that I see it as a pragmatic necessary evil sometimes. I understand your point. Deep down I agree with it and that causes me immense sadness and disillusionment. I want a set of principles that are true, universal and moral. A solid bedrock of philosophy to guide my thoughts and actions. If such principles can be invalidated by circumstances, they are worthless. A principle like "people cannot be tortured" cannot be relativized by the fact terrorists flew aircraft into buildings. Even though they flew aircraft into buildings, they cannot be tortured. Obviously CIA guys reject that worldview, but for me these things must be absolute. Otherwise I'm going to start coming up with many more equally valid reasons to torture people. If I cannot be certain of such fundamental principles, then pretty much anything can be justified based on circumstances and there's no point in wasting time philosophizing about anything. Everything becomes about power, what you can get away with. Civilization breaks down and the law of the jungle dominates. You become desensitized to death and suffering because you internalize the fact "people cannot be unjustly killed or imprisoned" was never a valid universal principle to begin with. > But I'm one of those "paradox of tolerance" guys Yeah, and I'm the guy who says democracy should be able to tolerate literal nazism or it's not really tolerant as it claims to be. I'm very sensitive to that argument because I live in a country where nazism is a crime and yet communism is not. Literal communists walk our soil with absolute impunity. Literal, self-admitted communists are in our supreme court. If they will arrest nazis, then I demand they also arrest these communists. If they refuse, I'm going to start drawing some very ugly conclusions about the system they use to justify their actions and the culmination of those conclusions is the complete rejection of their authority. The reason I said I agree with you deep down is I've already drawn these conclusions. I'm very uncertain about things right now. It's like nothing is true and everything is allowed. I think I make these comments here partly because I'm mourning and partly because I desperately want someone to prove me wrong. |