Brooklyn doesn't buy that human beings seek power, and power corrupts, and without restraint, people will do terrible things with that power to other human beings.PizzaSnake wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 12:57 pmNice ideas, but need to be leavened with reality: humans scuk and always will. Certain actors such as Putin will need to be stymied or removed. Who is going to do that?Brooklyn wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 12:42 pmMDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 12:38 pmThis piece emphasizes the distrust of power, as inherently evil, albeit necessary.PizzaSnake wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 12:20 pmExactly. Okay, not exactly my sentiments, but close.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 11:50 amThe "Founders" would have had great difficulty of even imagining the world in which we live, and from which America has so prospered. Pretty sure they were quite thankful for the assistance of the French, though.
Have to be able to imagine this interconnected world and why it's so important that it continue to evolve towards freedom and democracy, principles our Founders espoused as not being unique to America, but rather as inalienable rights...but some things are more simple: a bully is trying to subdue though any means, any atrocity, a country it claims to have the right to do so to.
We have the capacity to stop that bully and to maintain an international rule of law that enables this interconnected world to continue to evolve along the principles our Founders certainly did articulate.
Read this?
“The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” — B. Bailyn
“The modernization of American Politics and government during and after the Revolution took the form of a sudden, radical realization of the program that had first been fully set forth by the opposition intelligentsia ... in the reign of George the First. Where the English opposition, forcing its way against a complacent social and political order, had only striven and dreamed, Americans driven by the same aspirations but living in a society in many ways modern, and now released politically, could suddenly act. Where the French opposition had vainly agitated for partial reforms ... American leaders moved swiftly and with little social disruption to implement systematically the outermost possibilities of the whole range of radically libertarian ideas. In the process they ... infused into American political culture ... the major themes of eighteenth-century radical libertarianism brought to realization here. The first is the belief that power is evil, a necessity perhaps but an evil necessity; that it is infinitely corrupting; and that it must be controlled, limited, restricted in every way compatible with a minimum of civil order. Written constitutions; the separation of powers; bill of rights; limitations on executives, on legislatures, and courts; restrictions on the right to coerce and wage war—all express the profound distrust of power that lies at the ideological heart of the American Revolution and that has remained with us as a permanent legacy ever after.”
It's a construct of limiting, restraining government, by various means... so as to enable individuals to be free as much as possible to pursue their dreams.
Important themes and a pretty good starting point for how I see our system and why it's a general model for any society to emulate, at least in core principles, though clearly not all do. The first part is the basis of why as a 'conservative', I think it's important to preserve the institutions and practices that do restrain and limit the exercise of power. The second aspect is more the basis of why as a 'libertarian' with 'liberal' impulses on various social issues I see importance to that restraint of government power.
And as a nation, operating in a complex world, I think it's pretty darn clear that we benefit when more of the world embraces these sorts of principles as well...though, we also face a reality in which some nations, some societies, have not organized themselves to avoid the corruption, the evil concentration and use of power to selfish ends, individual freedoms be damned.
I have repeatedly called for the dissolution of the military industrial complex and the de-militarization of police forces. Any truly principled conservative and libertarian would do the same. Society would be so much better if we did so.
I abhor bullies. Putin is a bully, and, frankly, needs to be eliminated.
As usual, a trade-off between ideas and reality.
That's why we need policing and that's why we need a military...to restrain the worst impulses of those who would act horribly without such restraints, those who would accumulate power through force over others.
Of course, our own accumulation of power requires the same sorts of constraints and limitations, always with an eye to how power can corrupt.
The Founders did a pretty darn good job of creating a construct to do so...but it requires continued vigilance.
Because I'm able to see right or left wing nut jobs as such?
