Where I Stand: society

Society is how individuals try to come to terms with one another's mutual presence of the same planet. It's the polar opposite of private life.

Absolute privacy is impossible, because our actions affect others in countless ways.
Therefore society.

A totalitarian regime is inimically hostile to the private life of the common individual.
It seeks to deny its subjects the right to be human. This is simply evil, in and of itself.

An Objectivist "society" would leave too little in the public realm for society to function.
It is atomizing, alienating, and ultimately unworkable. Selfishness is *not* a virtue.

The individual human above the collective.

The greater good above the concerns of the few, but only if the greater good is understood as the aggregrate good of many individuals.

Inherent dignity of all human life. Especially when it's inconvenient.

Beware any attempt to dehumanize anyone. Nothing good ever comes of it.

Individual responsibility of all adult individuals.

One size does not fit all. Beware both excessive centralization and excessive decentralization. There is a proper level for each function.

No special rights for victim groups, and no affirmative action.

Politics co-opts all issues. Everything becomes political sooner or later.

It makes no sense to talk about keeping religion out of politics if politics won't reciprocate. Let religion defend its natural turf - morality, societal values and transcendental meaning, against encroachment.

The political realm is where we make decisions on a societal level. The only way to avoid politics is to try to make decisions on some other level. Sometimes that's just not feasible, therefore we have politics.

Politics at its best is a means to an end, namely the resolution of issues on a societal level.

Politics as an end to itself is a grave evil. "The purpose of power is power." People who think like that are not to be trusted with any power at all.

If a politician, or even an entire party, will say anything to win, what will he/it do when in power?

The social contract. And remember, it cuts both ways.

Citizenship must never be divorced from the social contract.

Privacy of the less powerful from the more powerful.

Laws and rules should be few, well understood, and beyond reasonable objection.

"Liberty under law" - Edmund Burke

Progress in a desirable direction is a good thing. Progress in the wrong direction is bad.

Charity to the truly needy, and only the truly needy. Be careful what behaviors you reward.

Some resources are finite. Reasonable individuals can work something out. Unreasonable individuals can go pound sand. Hence the social contract.

In any war, at least one side is in the wrong. No gas about liebensraum. No whining about needing resources (see above.) No excuses.

If you must fight a war, fight it in such a way as to win. There is no other reasonable way to fight a war.

If diplomacy alone solved all disagreements, there would be no war. Obviously, war exists, so diplomacy does not solve all problems by itself.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

But powerlessness also corrupts, in its own way.

No one has ever found a way to prevent extreme concentrations of power in the hands of a few.
Levelling schemes are futile.

Some power to every individual. Absolute power to no one.

More power to the responsible, less to the irresponsible, still less to children, least of all to the criminal.

Accountability of the more powerful to the less powerful.

Virtue must be rewarded or else something else will be, and that which we reward, we encourage.
Therefore, the good must be rewarded with greater power, as long as they remain good.

The Anglophone peoples, and the United States in particular, have hit upon a way to keep the powerful accountable, and thus ameliorate the ill effects of concentrated power. It involes the rule of law, and the separation of powers.

Justice is about making society work for the greatest good. It resolves competing claims in accordance with the social contract. Justice is a necessity. It deters evil and encourages good.

Vengeance is about assuaging the feelings of the aggrieved at the expense of the one he blames. It resolves nothing. Vengeance, in human hands, is inevitably petty and cruel. It is unlikely to serve the greater good.

Woe to those who call for vengeance in the name of "justice." If they can't tell the difference, how likely are they to be in the right in whatever grievance they may have?

Mercy up to a point. We all screw up sometimes. But we don't all make a way of life out of it.

Might doesn't make right. It often works in the opposite direction, though. The universe rewards those who come to terms with it, and punishes those who will not learn.

There is no such thing as social justice. All true justice deals with individual choices.

Free speech to anyone who has something to say, and is not known to be deliberately lying. And no, porn is not speech.

Freedom to hear what someone else is saying to you or saying publicly.

Freedom to ignore what someone else is saying.

Not everyone who is emitting a series of words is actually trying to say something. Infants babble. So do postmodernists.

No prior restraint to speech. But if someone is caught lying or talking nonsense, don't let him disown his words.

Sometimes fires do break out in crowded theaters. What then?

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