GenSeneca
Well-Known Member
And I gave you several more examples where you fully support initiating force against people. Here's a more comprehensive list: Welfare, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Universal Health Care, Subsidies and bailouts, Climate Change legislation, Foreign Aid, CAFE Standards, Public Education, Government Regulations, Taxation, and, of course, the topic of this thread - Gun Bans/Control.There are only two examples where I said I would initiate force -- the suicide and "trolley problem" examples.
I would characterize your behavior as you being a bastard
Bastard: A child whose birth lacks legal legitimacy—that is, one born to a woman and a man who are not legally married.
That doesn't seem to be a very accurate term for people who intentionally violate the rights of others.Evil: morally reprehensible, arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct.
That's the most accurate term but it's so overused, and misused, that people don't take it seriously.You strongly recommended against it? The horror!!! How many people ended up in the hospital and/or the morgue after that verbal massacre? ...10 pages and you still have no idea what the initiation of force actually is: Initiating force against someone is the only way you can violate their Rights. There are only two ways an individual's Rights can be violated - Force (physical and/or coercive) and Fraud.I strongly recommended against it (i.e. I used force.).
Which did you use in your strongly worded recommendation? Did your recommendation involve blackmail (coercion), did you lie or cheat (fraud), did you resort to theft of any kind (physical), did you use a weapon of any kind (physical), or in any other way threaten your coworkers lives, liberty, or property (coercion) if they refused to agree with your recommendation?
When you and I disagree on political issues, you and your gang of thugs resort to coercion - the threat of physical force - as a means of violating my Rights - legally of course. You pass laws that threaten me with a loss of my life, liberty, or property if I don't comply with your bans on things I have a Right to do or mandates that force me to do things I may or may not choose to do voluntarily. An individual's Right to Disagree is not merely a Right to speak out against things he disapproves of, Freedom of Speech covers that, a Right to Disagree is the Right to not have the will of others imposed on you by force.
I thought you weren't going to make this about her but here you are, once again, trying to make it about her. I made that statement, me, GenSeneca, not Rand. Also, and I've mentioned this before, attacking my views (or Rand's) is not the same thing as defending your own.The dictum of Rand is too simple minded to resolve complex controversy.
Your support for initiating force against others is what I've taken issue with from my very first post in this thread. What we've uncovered about your views on that subject are not very surprising:
- You admit you have no Right to violate the Rights of others but choose to do so anyway and cite "Common Sense" as justification for choosing to violate the rights of others.
- You think it's moral to violate the Rights of others when there's a good excuse but immoral if the excuse is bad or if there is no excuse at all.
- The difference between a good excuse and a bad excuse depends entirely upon whether or not you agree with the excuse.
- You don't respect the Rights, beliefs, opinions, or judgement of people with whom you disagree and, therefore, see no rational or logical reason why you shouldn't just ignore their Rights, beliefs, opinions, and judgements. So, you choose to violate their Rights and simply impose your will on them by force.
Me: Is murder moral or immoral?You are talking nonsense when you talk about conflation, equivocation, and rationalization applying to gray area situations.
You: Both, depends on the circumstances... Like the Trolley Problem.
Me: Using a circumstance to plausibly justify the act of murder is a Rationalization: In psychology and logic, rationalization (also known as making excuses) is an unconscious defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors or feelings are logically justified and explained in a rational or logical manner in order to avoid any true explanation, and are made consciously tolerable – or even admirable and superior – by plausible means.Rationalization encourages irrational or unacceptable behavior, motives, or feelings and often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. It is also an informal fallacy of reasoning.
You: But murder is a gray area!
Me: There is no gray area in logic.
You: My logic has lots of gray areas.
Me: That's because you're using fallacies, not logic.
You: That's nonsense.
So you weren't actually paying attention to what I said.... There were two separate concepts being conflated: means and ends - The means: Murder - The ends: Saving some kids.You were myopic when you considered the "trolley problem" as two separate problems -- murder vs. saving kids.
Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity — the differences appear to become lost. In logic, it is the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one, which produces errors or misunderstandings as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts.
Logic requires that we separate the two concepts so they can be dealt with individually - Murder: Immoral - Saving Lives: Moral. Conflation is how you Rationalize (create a plausible but rationally fallacious excuse for) the situation and thereby conclude that the immoral act of murder is actually moral - "It's moral to murder innocent people as a means of saving the lives of some children"
My "dictum" wasn't clear? I would not intentionally initiate the use of force against anyone, not ever, not under any circumstances.you never did tell me what you would do in that counterexample.
Your turn... How many convicted felons would you intentionally murder to save the life of one innocent little girl?
I was actually surprised you balked at that question before... You had claimed that your "morality" was better suited for dealing with gray areas than my own 'rigid and inflexible' morality but you actually thought the question was too gray an area for your "common-sense morality" to handle. But I guess it makes sense... When you think the answer is obvious you don't have to think about it, it's just "common sense" but when the answer isn't so obvious you actually do have to think about it..
Since you've crippled your mind with fallacies of logic and reason to create plausible excuses for "common sense" answers to "obvious" questions, having to actually think about a situation that isn't so obvious must be agonizing, like trying to walk on broken legs. To answer the question you will have to rationally assign a subjective value to both the life of the little girl and to the life of a single convict. If you use rational thought to arrive at the number, then you'll be able to explain how and why you arrived at that number. If you ignore rational thought and rely on your emotions to pick a number that feels right, then you wont' be able to explain how or why you arrived at the number, it's just "common sense" that you did.
What authority do I need? I'm not the one who thinks it's moral to impose my will onto others by force. Respecting your Rights as an individual, and choosing to never violate them, requires no authority - just a 'rigid and inflexible' adherence to morality. Only the people who seek to violate the rights of others require some form of authority to do so.It seems that Ayn Rand gave you your authority.