Bakustra wrote:Purnell, when I said to stop lying, just what part of that rotting carcass you call a brain misfired to convince you that I really meant, "Keep lying! Don't bother to read what I've said, just take what I pointed out in your argument and pretend that I did it!"? That might be devastating on the playground, but it's just infuriating here. I'm going to be forthright and say that if you told me that the sky was blue, I'd look up to check, given the sheer amount of lies, distortions, and misinterpretations you've offered.
I'm just going to skip over the lengthy paragraph where you apparently are talking to yourself, because I never advocated natural rights, indeed quite the opposite. I do believe that you're mimicking me. Too bad I've taken advantage of expansions in American copyright law to copyright this schtick. You know what? I think that you need a more fitting nickname, or several.
MarshalPinocchio, you're still falling into the same contradiction. You admit that rights by default are nonexistent. So, then, why should they be treated as though they existed by default, such that they should be protected? In other words, how does your theory about the law explain why these rights are necessary for social order in some cases, but not in others? Are you going to get out of this with nationalism and ethnocentrism? Because winners don't use those arguments.
Meanwhile, you've attempted to redefine the argument to "well you haven't said anything about the nature of government except mentioning FILTHY CANNIBAL SAVAGES, therefore I AM A WINNER!!!!" See, I'm mocking you because you're incredibly self-important, smug, and verged on racism earlier. I'm sorry that you can't handle that, and so must project, lie, and in general provide me with more fodder. I notice that you didn't concede on being wrong about social contract theory. I guess you really are MarshalProjection.
Pinocchio, you can't just say that something is so. Saying that your beliefs about social order explain everything doesn't mean that they do, as the case of rights shows. Plenty of societies value rights differently. So, is social order subjective, thus rendering it as useful as justice or any of the other concepts you dismissed, or are societies hierarchal, with the USA undoubtedly on top? So much for relativism, seeing as you'd have to be a cultural absolutist and supremacist for your beliefs to make sense. But again, I suspect that you've never even thought about them, seeing how you try to turn this away from me questioning your beliefs. Honestly, Pinocchio, that's worse as a basis for a religion than Scientology.
My point is not, for the disembrained like yourself, Projection, that social order is totally irrelevant, but that it cannot explain everything about the law. I am sure that you will disregard this paragraph because I said something unkind and accurate about you.
You argued in the very beginning that the death penalty was part of an objective law, and justified because anybody who killed people without authorization from the God-Emperor State was an enemy of society, and it really was only a tiny extension from depriving people of sovereignty. Therefore, it would seem to be necessary under the system that you have outlined. You have pretended that your system allows for the law to change, but again, that would require a subjectivity in social order that you have rejected altogether. You now pretend that you weren't arguing for the death penalty at all! I'd suppose some conveniently rare memory disorder if you didn't lie compulsively throughout your posts. Stop running away from the implications of the beliefs that you hold, you craving cur. Have the courage to either accept the implications or abandon your beliefs.
Similarly, you talk about how it would be ideal if believers in justice had a minimal influence on the law. So how do you suppose to accomplish this without restricting their access to the law in some way, either through heavily encouraging them to accept your beliefs, or through disenfranchisement of some kind? Apparently you believe that the law should not be defended from the supposed threats you are certain exist from the introduction of moral-based thinking into lawmaking, in order for you to deny that this is implied. A true American HeroTM. Or you're running away from your beliefs again.
You end this by arguing in favor for the death penalty after saying you didn't! Can't you keep your lies consistent in one post? Are you really this incompetent? Are you? Are you? In any case, you take what I said, and then assert that dehumanization is an inevitable consequence, obviously an attentuated effect, and that imprisonment is a feature of every single society on Earth. I want you to justify these, since you presented them as facts, not as opinions. Can you do that? For a little hint, explaining either how nomadic groups without permanent habitation can imprison people or how they do not count as societies would go a long way towards answering the third point. No doubt you will whine, moan, and mewl pathetically, but that's your problem for embracing absolutist statements. So sad for you, Pinocchio, especially after your (heh) passionate defense of relativism earlier, although I have to admit that it's quite possible you don't know what that means.
In conclusion: stop lying, justify your claims, explain why you're not contradicting yourself. Good luck with all of these!
More evasions, more strawmen, and no more substance than any of your other posts.
Social order is objective in the sense that it either exists, in which case you have a society, or it does not. It is either effectively upheld by some form of authority, or you have anarchy. I do see you've given up on holding out Melanesians as an example of a people without a social order, and instead have resorted to accusing me of racism when I pointed out the failings of a loose tribal order. One which, may it be noted, through which every people in the world would have passed in prehistory, prior to more formalized state structures coming into existence (probably by violence). But of course differing societies have different social orders. They evolve, the say way the concept of rights do, through historical practice driven by realistic factors, like economics, geography, demographics, etc. I have no idea why you think that China and the US having different approaches to upholding public order is somehow a decisive point against me, unless you are simple-minded to take "variation" as "contradiction." The form of a social order is no more universal than the idea of rights, but it is objectively measurable and easily quantified in the way that an ideal form of morality is not.
And of course that China does not recognize the same rights as the United States is to be expected given the vastly different historical experiences of both countries. That both have a social order is readily established by their continued existence, but there is no reason that they should share the exact same structures. Obviously there is a basic, minimum level of similarity that must be shared in protecting public order, such as the monopoly on violence, prohibition of obviously socially disruptive behavior like murder, and establishment of formal enforcement mechanisms of the same. And that is how social order is an objective reality, not in the sense that all societies everywhere must look alike, or whatever else you are ineptly attempting to imply. And rights ultimately are memes, associated clusters of behavior that have become established through the give and take between elements of society. That some were never established in certain societies means, of course, that their absence does not affect the public order. That the PRC does not have unlimited freedom of speech does not threaten their established order since Chinese have never had unlimited freedom of speech anyway, and there is presently no pressing public demand for the same. You do seem to take recognition that societies are ultimately forms of organization of power as an affront, but it is merely the way things are and always have been.
I have also repeatedly noted the lack of any need to "justify" the existence of rights within my description of how the law functions to uphold social order. Their existence is a matter of historical course, or not. Their special status within the law code is a result of social evolution. But even starting from first principles, banning the behaviors clustered together around the meme of "freedom of speech" requires the law to take an action in banning it. If that action cannot be justified in defense of social order then it is unnecessary; if people have become accustomed to exercising such behavior or holding some other kind of privilege, it may be directly counterproductive to make a ban. In that sense rights are purely an artifact, having no
a priori existence, and depend on the existence of a social order to provide them any meaning in the first place. Social order comes first and rights follow through practice and evolution. There is no necessary presumption that everything not permitted by law is forbidden, which you seem to be assuming, which is where the scope for rights to develop comes from. Aside of course from the other source of rights, conflict between particular groups in society leading to concessions from the elite governing society. In no way have I ever asserted that a social order must be static or unchanging; that is something you erected from the straw you have been spinning, and you've certainly failed to show how it has any connection at all to the idea of law defending social order.
And of course it is not incumbent on me to justify the rights held by the American social model anymore than it is to denounce China for failing to uphold them. One can use the outcomes that a particular social order promotes as a kind of objective baseline when discussing the desirability of features thereof. One can even do some comparisons, which may help establish if a particular feature (such as on elements of free expression) is actually necessary for maintaining public order or is superfluous. Statistics like socioeconomic indicators, literacy rates, incarceration rates, crime rates, and so on are certainly objective measurements by any standards.
Your continued assertion that I promote a repression of people is a strawman I have already burned down. The reasons that it is desirable in a secular and diverse society for the law not to be heavily influenced by any one particular moral code should be self-evident. Nevertheless there is no imperative to force the law into any shape, merely what ought to be. Deriving support for a rational-basis and public-order focused law with repression of other perspectives is like taking support for public atheism to mean a ban on public religion.
Finally you conflate "restraining threats to public order" with "imprisonment." No society allows everyone to do whatever they want, least of all tightly defined, traditional cultures. Nomads do not have prison, but they have ways of dealing with people who do not fit in. Habitual threats to the safety of others may be restrained by being killed or exiled. In any case, the threat is dealt with. Prison is just a way that more settled and more organized societies have come to for accomplishing the same task. And you yourself claimed that incarceration "dehumanizes" the guilty; thus it is inevitable, unless you think it possible for society to exist without somehow dealing with threats to itself and the public order. Perhaps you do think it is the case, in which case you have embraced anarchism. Nor have you presented any evidence that this so-called dehumanization represents a significant problem in modern society, much less one relative to the problems caused by abolishing prison. Frankly your path of "reasoning" on the matter is so tortured and absurd that engaging with it is a serious chore. In any case assuming that you are correct, that prison does dehumanize people and that this is a serious social problem, you would still need to demonstrate an effective alternative to imprisonment or denounce the need of the state to uphold social order by restraining criminals. Which is it, by the way?
) will change this.
The amount of rights protection and the recognition of these rights may differ among societies, but most societies (which exist for longer than a year) create a legal system. The PRC legal system provides fewer rights to citizens and is less reliable when it comes to protection of said rights, but that does not mean it recognizes no rights. But I see you say the exact same thing later below.
