Libertarianism

[Seth]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

The majority, huh? Care to do a bit of fact checking?

That's the point. Hitler was duly elected under their existing system. Their existing system allowed Hitler to be elected and it allowed him to perpetrate one of the worst crimes against humanity on record. This is because their system did not acknowledge and protect the inherent, unalienable, natural human rights of all citizens.

That's why democracy sucks.

[Hermit]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

The majority, huh? Care to do a bit of fact checking?

That's the point. Hitler was duly elected under their existing system.

You said "the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time." Back that up with facts, will you? No waffling please. I want facts.

[JimC]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

The majority, huh? Care to do a bit of fact checking?

That's the point. Hitler was duly elected under their existing system.

You said "the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time." Back that up with facts, will you? No waffling please. I want facts.

Yes. It was a distortion of their system, one accomplished by intimidation by armed thugs, and also straightforward cheating. Nonetheless, it showed that their particular democratic system was rather fragile, and susceptible to such manipulation. Most modern democracies, bolstered by either constitutions and/or a strong, independent judiciary, would be much less likely to succumb.

PS - perhaps not a majority, but a very sizeable minority of Germans did support Hitler directly - it wasn't tiny...

[Hermit]

perhaps not a majority, but a very sizeable minority of Germans did support Hitler directly - it wasn't tiny...

Jim, nobody denies that Hitler had significant support. Seth claimed a bit more than that. I'm waiting for him to back his claims up with facts. Once we're done with his assertion, the keyword of which is "majority", I'll raise another aspect for which the same sentence that he used that word in is, shall we say, a bit problematic.

Then again, he might just back away from his idiotic, fact free claims by simply walking away from them in silence. He does that often enough once he's run out of waffly things to say that support them in exactly the way farts stop buildings from collapsing.

[pErvinalia]

That one person, or society as a whole has the power to compel the payment of taxes does not make such actions either moral or ethical.

Actually that's the very definition of moral or ethical.

Society and via governments are the sole definition of what is 'right' or 'wrong'. Which of course means right and wrong does change with time but so what. All morality is relative

The great philosophers of the world throughout history, of which you are not one, seem to disagree with you.

Really? Your list of fallacies employed lately is growing quite impressively..

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

In Germany, at the time, it was. But it wasn't in other societies and in today's times. What's so controversial about that??

That one fact shows just how stupid your argument is. And it's why I'm not going to bother debating philosophy with an idiot.

The reason you won't do it is because you've had your arse handed to you so many times on this bollocks of "natural" rights. I wouldn't be debating it if I was you either. It's fucking embarrassing.

[Hermit]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

In Germany, at the time, it was.

It wasn't.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I didn't actually think it was, but I didn't want to allow Seth to change the goal posts yet again. Even if it was held by the majority, it doesn't change the fact that morals are relative to time and place.

[JimC]

Yes, I certainly was not supporting Seth's evidence-free waffling...

One hope that the examples of totalitarian governments rising to power in the twentieth century serve at least as cautionary tales, and show us that democracies need to be vigilant against creeping authoritarianism or manipulation of their processes to reduce freedoms, which can come equally from the left and the right. Even a ration of the more moderate forms of libertarianism can have value, to attack the more ridiculous examples of government imposition of pointless rules.

[JimC]

Yeah, I didn't actually think it was, but I didn't want to allow Seth to change the goal posts yet again. Even if it was held by the majority, it doesn't change the fact that morals are relative to time and place.

That becomes a very slippery slope. While not wanting to rigidly define moral absolutes, there are general ethical principles that have some universal value. For example, for a society to agree that might does not equal right, and that people should be free from violence, or at least that violence of the strong against the weak will be opposed by that society and dealt with by rule of law. That should not be susceptible to a relativistic interpretation, just because, let's say, a caste system exists (I'm thinking of the current situation in India, with rapes of Dalits being used as a mechanism of oppression).

I'll be stuffed if I'll let cultural relativism prevent me from making an attempt at ethical judgement, based on some set of potentially universal values. These are not Seth's rigid "natural rights", nor are they religious absolutes, but they do depend on putting some sort of value on individual freedom. They can be argued about, fine tuned and have at least a degree of cultural context, but they can be employed.

[pErvinalia]

Of course, Jim. But it still doesn't change the fact that there is no objective absolute morality. Future societies will consider us highly immoral for our stance on homosexuality, stem cell research, capital punishment (in some places) and even our non-killing penal system in the West (outside of Scandinavia), and our state sponsored terrorism of other sovereign states.

[JimC]

Of course, Jim. But it still doesn't change the fact that there is no objective absolute morality. Future societies will consider us highly immoral for our stance on homosexuality, stem cell research, capital punishment (in some places) and even our non-killing penal system in the West (outside of Scandinavia), and our state sponsored terrorism of other sovereign states.

They may well, and I agree that the zeitgeist has changed and will change further. But it hasn't changed randomly, it has (IMO) involved an evolution of our ability to decipher and apply rationally driven ethics. Whether that evolutionary development in ethics is applied or not is often determined by the regressive pressure of religions, and corporate greed.

[MrJonno]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

The majority, huh? Care to do a bit of fact checking?

That's the point. Hitler was duly elected under their existing system.

You said "the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time." Back that up with facts, will you? No waffling please. I want facts.

It was moral and ethical to the people doing it, however scary that it is that doesn't make it any less true.

If the Nazi's had won we would be celebrating racial purity as good, and allowing diseased sub humans to live as evil.

I stand by my statement that whatever society decides is good is good by definition at least at the time. It's one of the reasons I'm not into ancestor worship like some Americans are, 18th century people may have been good by their own standards but they were savage evil people by modern standards.

Almost certainly in a couple of centuries time people will look back at us and think in many ways we were evil

[Seth]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

The majority, huh? Care to do a bit of fact checking?

That's the point. Hitler was duly elected under their existing system.

You said "the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time." Back that up with facts, will you? No waffling please. I want facts.

No, I said that using Jonno's reasoning that would be the case as a way to highlight the stupidity of his notion that just because the majority says it's moral or ethical, that makes it moral and ethical.

[Hermit]

Using your definition, the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time.

The majority, huh? Care to do a bit of fact checking?

That's the point. Hitler was duly elected under their existing system.

You said "the Nazi Holocaust was both moral and ethical merely because the majority said it was at the time." Back that up with facts, will you? No waffling please. I want facts.

No, I said that using Jonno's reasoning that would be the case as a way to highlight the stupidity of his notion that just because the majority says it's moral or ethical, that makes it moral and ethical.

Ah. Once again I copypaste from your own post, and once again you deny having written exactly what I copypasted.

[Seth]

Ah. Once again I copypaste from your own post, and once again you deny having written exactly what I copypasted.

Actually, you quote-mined, mendaciously leaving out the words "Using your definition,..." and then you attempted to derail the discussion by tangenting off into irrelevancies.