Is the republic the best form of government?

As with most conversations with you, we are talking past each other. You talk in big categories, generalizations. I find it hard to get to what you think.

I don’t know. Maybe the extremists don’t like the liberalness of the Lutheran and Episcopal Church, as well others like them, so they feel they have strike out at them. I do know the dotard doesn’t like women, so there’s that too.

I am not familiar with much of the history of the region, but political instability seems to have always been the norm. You’re correct about the honor culture and Catholicism. The upper class Spaniards (and Portuguese in Brazil’s case) that have ruled the region do come from a sort of honor culture and are strongly Catholic. Combine that with a mixed population and it is a recipe for trouble.

Possibly. But very few populations are able to do this – which goes back to my earlier statement that the people in a nation are the reason why or why not a particular form of government is successful.

I completely agree. In an American sense, we could say Humanism is very, very White.

What’s interesting about that part of the world, is the indigenous built a lot of impressive structures, so the history is easy to find. They also fought the Europeans and fared better than North Americans. It’s getting to where you can go out into the plains or deserts of the US and find the stories, but down there, you can’t avoid it.

Humanism is universal.

Europeans have many cultures which are completely anti-bourgeois, anti-humanist: the Celts, the Vikings, the KKK, the Catholic Church, Communism, Romanticism, the English knights and kings, the honor culture of the Mediterrean region, etc. etc.

Each of these tendencies still have huge influence on our Western societies, at the source of anti-feminism, anti-happiness, racism, imperialism, irrationalism, anti-commerce, etc.

It is up to us to choose either of the two directions: bourgeois/humanism or anti-bourgeois/humanism.

Economic freedom (bourgeoisie) and personal freedom (secular humanism) go hand in hand. So the two are one and the same thing.

https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023

I strongly disagree with this. And the Cato institute is about as far from an unbiased source as you can get.

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The data are here, do they look unrealistic to you?

Oh hell yes! And let me give you some more data from the same folk. LINK

What is unrealistic?

They are not the same folks btw. The “freedom in the 50 states” is from two guys from the American Institute for Economic Research.

The “Human Freedom Index” is from guys from the Cato Institute, Fraser Institute, and Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom.

When people take free-market as the clear winner in economic policies, they naturally fall into believing everything the champions of free-market write. The economically far right are great at marketing. I mean, who can possibly argue with “free-market”? It just sounds so fair! Anyone arguing against a free-market must be mad.

But free means unregulated. Libertarians (CATO) hate regulation. Regulation means you have to treat your workers fairly. Regulation means you can’t pollute the environment. Regulation means taxes. Regulation means you can’t lie about your net worth or the value of your properties. Regulation means that you can’t take advantage of the poor by providing mortgages you know they won’t be able to pay.

If you ignore everything in the last paragraph, and then produce graphics that highlight free-market countries and present the free-market as causal for human freedom, then you might be a libertarian.

CATO ranks Florida as the second most free state in the U.S. They (FL) ban books in order to rewrite history and push fossil fuels. The NAACP issues a travel advisory recommending that blacks not visit Florida due to racism. Trump moved to Florida because that’s where he can be himself.

Yes, a free-market can produce gazillionaires. Is that working?

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You’re right, but they are playing the same games. LINK

Do you think the countries listed in the “Human Freedom Index” which are at the top of the list are countries where life is difficult?


The “Freedom in the 50 states” criterion approaching freedom of speech is “educationial freedom” and is defined as “The single most important educational freedom variable is the index of tax credit and deduction laws for private education.”

The guys who designed the “Freedom in the 50 states” are liberal conservatives. I repeated many times on this forum that I am against liberal conservatism, and I did not share this document.

Repeating it doesn’t make it true. This is a discussion forum where different points of view are presented and compared. A graph is a conclusion, a story somebody wants to tell. The methods for how that graph was made sometimes tell a different story.

Reality is determined by rigorous use of data and defining terms. Being rigorous about something like “freedom” is a challenge.

Conservatism is compatible with feminism, atheism, and criticism of traditions?

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From The Big Myth:
If market fundamentalism is a religion, its bible is The Road to Serfdom. In 2020, none other than Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson made this point. The former Soviet Union, he argued, was a cult based on Marx’s Capital, and American conservatism had its own cult based on The Road to Serfdom: “You attend a couple of lectures at Cato and you think you’re a libertarian and you’ve got the world figured out as a kind of this seamless theory of everything. Next thing you know, you’re arguing to privatize the sidewalks.”

How did he (Hayek) become the patron saint of all-out hostility to government?

The fact is that the nuanced Hayek of The Road to Serfdom was not (for the most part) the Hayek who reached the American people. In the hands of ideologues, The Road to Serfdom was transmogrified from a complex and subtle argument about the risks of governmental control into an antigovernment polemic. That transmogrification began with the book’s promotion in America by Henry Hazlitt and the National Association of Manufacturers.

The initial U.S. reception to The Road to Serfdom was negative. 
 It was only through the efforts of University of Chicago economists -Aaron Director, Frank Knight, and Henry Simmons - that the University of Chicago Press was prevailed upon to publish it.

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I repeated many times I am not hostile to government, and that I dislike the Cato Institute precisely for having the tendency to boil everything down to economics.

I also criticized Hayek, no later than yesterday (for being a conservative using opportunistic arguments).

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I don’t know why, but it is as if a pro-free-market can not but be a conservative.

There are no centrists in the US? It’s either you’re a progressive and a keynesian, or a Christian-right and a free-market?

@lozenge I feel for you. I really do. You are raising these topics as my country is on the verge of potential collapse. Half of the voters in my country indicate that they will vote for Trump


My reaction is strong out of fear. That’s not your fault. I am watching Fox News brainwash our population. I see mega rich with no valuable skills taking our wealth overseas. Japan will soon own U.S. Steel.

Are there only extremists in the U.S.? Mostly, yes. I find myself frightened of the political right’s use of free-market to remove critical regulations as they pile up their riches. That surely (and reasonably) makes me an enemy of the conservative right. I know from your posts that you see this as an academic exercise. Given current U.S. politics, I don’t feel that I have that freedom.

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What does “I feel for you” mean? (genuine question, not a native speaker)

Conservatism is a huge threat. That is a reason I am on this forum. Because humanism is the most credible force against conservatism.

In 2022, when the supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, with many “Republicans” celebrating (Ben Shapiro, etc.), I was so angry, almost in fury, because it was the sign the religious conservatives had deeply penetrated the Republican party and the US government.

I understand that.

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In fact, no later than last week (or so), I was worrying about this situation in the US. This is even the reason I opened the thread Secularism in the US and in GB !