I can and do have another viewpoint than you do, moreover I cannot imagine your viewpoint at all. It is completely disconnected from reality.
That is why history keeps repeating the same mistakes. People think they are to smart to learn from history.
Seems to me you are the one stuck in hero-worship without having learned the lessons from history.
Careful, you may just be creating another Hitler or Putin. Do you approve of what Putin is doing?
Trump does, can you imagine that?
He probably blames President Biden, much like stupid customer did. This customer blamed the gas prices on President Biden, because “we get all our gas from Russia” (we don’t, but he wasn’t going to listen to facts) and Biden mishandling of Putin. Calling President Biden (mind you, they seem to be about the same age) mentally incapable of doing the job, talking about dementia and crap, which Biden is no worse off than anyone else that age, maybe even doing better.
You said Afghanistan should remain stuck in the 14th century. Even though its people have shown the willingness and desire to move to a more inclusive and compassionate future.
Yes, it would have been much better to leave Afghanistan to move slowly at their own pace forward. To teach their people things that are completely different than the morals of their government and religion was not a smart move. And to do it a second time just showed how arrogant and little understanding and respect for the country of Afghanistan Americans have.
The new generations would have moved out of the 14th century. Twenty more years of beliefs for a region that has dug in traditions is not that much. Look at the traditions of the Jewish, very dug in and they are being moved little by little. Example, in 2019 Israel shelved the plans for schools to deal with transgender students. Now today they are moving forward at their own speed. They don’t in America to get in the middle of their traditions.
I usually just toss my paper Freethought In Action from CFI, not that I dismiss their news, but it’s usually online anyway. Well, I guess it’s not, not all of it.
On the back page, Janet L. Factor looked back four years to an article on authoritarians. It’s deserving of its own thread, maybe I’ll scan it in, and face the copyright consequences.
She lists the traits of people who follow authoritarians. They create their own powerful authoritarians to follow. It’s somewhere between 1/5 and 1/3 of the population, some seemingly born that way and others who have it triggered by either a taste of power or fear. They see the world as hierarchical and their job is to climb those ladders and kick others down as needed. This is considered some sort of “natural order”, whether it’s by invented “races”, or “castes”, or Plato’s “metals”.
They cross all political lines, although not evenly, but that’s important. They thrive on the existing battles, unconcerned with who is hurt in the process, only how it relates to getting closer to the top.
From the 2018 column, “This is the terrible crux of the matter. If status is the good, if dominance is a virtue, then asserting it must be a duty. And the more clearly it is asserted, the more virtuous the enforcer must be…”
This is why it is my theme to focus on these sorts of values, not some individual who is making illogical claims about history or rising to power in a particular place. Those are the results, the symptoms. When it’s bad, evil actions have to be fought, I’m not a passivist, but we have had the breathing room and communications infrastructure in a place for a hundred years to address this, and we barely even recognize it.
There was an preexisting agreement. Afghanistan wanted us to leave . If we had stayed we would have become occupiers. Biden had no choice in the matter except honor the agreement.
You believe we can just do as we please? We cannot. When we negotiate an agreement, the US tries to honor the agreement. That is what makes the US a reliable partner. It was Trump who concluded unwarranted agreements and cancelled previous agreements , but that’s the difference between Trump and Biden .
Trump broke many agreements , Biden tries to honor prior agreements.
You are the most guilt of that tactic and the strategy of one way “discussion” because you don’t seem to absorb or acknowledge anything from outside of your mysterious spectrum.
You are the one making everything fit into your pin point perspective - while ignoring everything that disputes your opinion.
As for your list, what’s that got to do with your understanding of history, our lack thereof?
This is where I think you are not looking at a complete picture of history. The thing we will probably never get past is that “America” is somehow moving into other countries and “teaching” them things. Those things existed before America. Remember, we were late to ban slavery.
In the centuries before the 14th, the Muslim world was a leader in gathering reason-based information from around the world. Granted, their goal was to dominate the world by being such a leader, but, still, it was progress that Europe took a couple more centuries to catch up to. So, when you say “pace forward”, I have no idea what you mean. Freedom, democracy, human rights, are all morals and expressions of values that have been around before the empires we are talking about even existed.
Now you are bringing in another example, and I’m not going to keep chasing you around the globe. Nations everywhere move forward with human rights, then slip back, that’s actually my point. The slipping back is not caused by anyone promoting the progress. Can you see the flaw in that logic?
Nations everywhere move forward with human rights, then slip back, that’s actually my point. The slipping back is not caused by anyone promoting the progress. Can you see the flaw in (your) logic?
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC.
Their views. Biden was wrong on Afghanistan.
But the crisis of the withdrawal was about far more than the enormous task of removing Americans and Afghan allies in August. Lost in all the focus on evacuations was the big picture: the ignominy of the war ending with the Taliban’s return, 20 years after America removed it from power. This was an agonizing outcome given the enormous costs of the war — all the thousands of U.S. and NATO troops lost and money spent, and the scale of the destruction and loss of life of both civilians and Afghan security forces.
The Taliban’s return to power means that this fall the vast majority of Afghan girls have not been allowed to attend secondary school, setting back the gains a generation of girls had enjoyed in Afghanistan’s cities. The country is now on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, with nearly 23 million people facing acute food insecurity.
BS. Biden has no leadership skills. Blame it on Trump. How many millions of barrels of oil have we been buying from Russia since Biden took office? And why?
Freedom - is the ability to act as you choose, morality is related to how you should choose to act.
Human rights - we relate to today came about by Blackstone. His thinking was because human rights derive from important human interests and needs, it is natural to expect legal protection of human rights. Human rights are the universal rights any human being can enjoy while moral rights are the rights that are accorded according to the ethics or moral code.
Is democracy moral? Around the year 430 BC, Pericles, proclaimed its virtues as follows:
Our system of government does not copy the institutions of our neighbors. It is more the case of our being a model to others, than of our imitating anyone else. Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law ; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possess. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And, just as our political life is free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other. We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbor if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still do hurt people’s feelings. We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect. We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.
According to Plato, the democratic freedom praised by Pericles is nothing but anarchy, tolerance is acceptance of evil, depravity, and lawlessness—and the political equality of citizens is only a pretense, because despite everything, power rests in the hands of a narrow elite that is remarkably skillful at manipulating public opinion and at the same time immoral and incompetent in matters of crucial importance for the state (Plato, The Republic, Book VIII [557a –564a]).
I know you read things Mike. I know there are limits on what a democracy can do. What I can’t figure out, is how you support your conclusions
I made the point that Afghanistan should not be pushed into our way of thinking about morals. I picked two people from the past who understood the Rules of Laws and morals. Pericles laid out the method for morals that was accepted. We will use Pericles to represent Afghanistan. Plato came along the next generation and found those morals need to have more government controls. We can say Plato represents America. Both may have been correct. And both may have been wrong if we switch generations.
That was where Jesus had some morals controlled by individuals and others morals by government. And had a third governmental department just to make sure the government followed and did not change the morals. The government must follow the morals it enforces too. Basically, we call that the Supreme Court today.
What we were doing in Afghanistan was telling them to follow our morals. The fact that we were building schools and infrastructure and spending truck loads of money there. Over half the Afghanistan people wanted us to get out of the country. This should have been a very easy job for us, and the people should have loved us. If we had only used the knowledge of history to guide our work there.
We have a divide country with police policies and procedures. Defund the police and fund more police. Again, the problem cannot be fixed by pouring money into the police force or defunding the police force. The problem lies with the court system and the democracy morals of the system. The views of the older generation vs. the younger generations are as divided in what they think about the morals of our Justice systems today as Plato and Pericles was on how to enforce democracy morals 2300 years ago.
Definitely did not get your analogy.
Our biggest difference is, you say “our morals” as if they were developed separately, as if our cultural histories have never crossed before. I also question your statistic of half the people wanting us out. And even if it is that high, how would doing what that half wants result in all of them “loving us”?
What we did while we were there is a different issue. We could have done much better. But turning our backs on injustice would also have a bad result. But way I’m getting into hypotheticals now.
I look at the long story of humans becoming more compassionate. You look at histories of clashes of civilizations and come up with solutions that leave people in harms way. I can see that you think your way will result in a more peaceful resolution, but the immediate effect is more violence, and I don’t think the path to peace is as short as you think
The path I think you want is a progressive democratic system. And people of the past have reached that point. Each time they end up in the directions of gold domes and starving lower caste with lower protein levels and poor medical. Sometimes opening the door for plagues. The morals levels of the people can even have been extremely high. But as Plato pointed out, you end up with anarchy, tolerance, depravity, and lawlessness—and the political equality of citizens is only a pretense, because despite everything, power rests in the hands of a narrow elite that is remarkably skillful at manipulating public opinion and at the same time immoral and incompetent in matters of crucial importance for the state.
That’s why we have the Supreme Court. As the defund the police shows the failure of the court system today. We have upper caste department heads lying in congress to the public. Something you and I would go to jail for. And nothing is done to these people. Our legislative Branch of government has always been far from perfect or fair. But at least we had the State legislative holding some morals. Today that is going away.
Historically we are working in a system that has been building during all our history and could may even have roots in pre-history. There are 183 countries that are built on the backbone of our system. And the common factor of problems is as Plato pointed out. The answer is known. It is the problem of morals. As Jefferson knew, Jesus was the best teacher of morals at the time. I think we need to look at trying to teach morals in our education system. We were teaching it in entertainment (TV) and sports for a while. But that is pretty much gone. We will never be able to regulate and legislate a civilization with out wars if we don’t get a handle on the moral issues. We need to teach morals in our education system or take away and limit some democratic freedoms.
As you know, I am no word smith. And not very good at getting my viewpoints across. Thank you for taking the time to look and try to understand my viewpoints.
An added point to the above discussion. America’s IRS laws were expanding to the point that a business needed an attorney in tax laws to file your tax returns.
In the IRS code a battle went on for a several decades on the status of independent contractors. The IRS finally put an end to the battle by issuing the following words in the tax code to test for independent contractors. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck. It is a duck.” Meaning that if you have an employee that you call an independent contractor. That person needs to be treated as an independent contractor and not an employee.
I think we need to give the Supreme Court some moral laws with the same type of coverage.
Your welcome, but, no matter how much time I spend, I don’t understand your views. I don’t agree with your assessment of a Plato, I’m afraid to ask what you think is moral, given past statements, your IRS example is just wrong, and that’s just this recent post.
Let’s swing this thread back to the title of the thread.
Cheney in Profile In Courage Speech: Every One Has A Duty To Set Aside Partisan Battles And Stand Together To Preserve Our Great Republic
Rep. Liz Cheney Remarks at JFK Profiles in Courage Award Ceremony | May 22, 2022
It was weird hearing her talk about the Dick Cheney listening to John Kennedy’s speech and I didn’t find her joke funny, but it is what it is. I have strong feelings on both those people, but those seem rather beside the point to what’s going on here and I was glad I listened to her entire talk.