Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (10701)	4/7/2001 5:59:02 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

So, a person is seen jaywalking and is hit by a car and is lying in the street unconscious. By principle, we shouldn't help him. We don't know that he doesn't want to lie unconscious in the street; we might not want to, but we can't impose our values on him. By jaywalking maybe he wanted to get hit. We don't know. So let the guy lie there, and don't impose our values on him.

To: Lane3 who wrote (10701)	4/9/2001 1:03:04 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Well, there we go.....You once asked what the difference was between believing the Holocaust was objectively evil, and finding it evil according to one's "personal standards". This is one practical consequence of the difference: we cannot combat evil because it would be "imposing our values". Wouldn't want to "impose our values" on regimes permitting chattel slavery. Wouldn't want to impose our values on the Nazi swine who rounded up Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political prisoners and gassed them or worked them to death. I mean, who are we to say that that is wrong? After all, didn't our great- great- great- grandfathers do something wrong too? So forever after, we cannot comment upon evil, or take steps to help anyone, but must remain forever complicit in our inaction. Although all morality is a matter of personal choice, and relative, nevertheless there is an inviolable principle involved, that we should not interfere with the autonomy of others. Why that is the one absolute principle beats me, though. What if my personal morality differs from yours, and in mine, we are supposed to interfere? What is the absolute standpoint from which you will condemn me? Oh, well, guess there is none. There is just politics, and the determination to win elections and shape policy........

To: Lane3 who wrote (10701)	4/9/2001 1:13:56 AM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

<<<we should at least take a moment to consider if they want to be freed before we ride in on our white horse to save them.>>> The problem those slaves have is not that anyone is rushing in too fast (not even taking a moment to consider if they want to be freed), to save them, trampling with the hooves of their white horses over their right to be absolutely subject to whatever tortures and deprivations (even including deprivation of their own names and contact with their families and forcible conversion to Islam, in many cases) their owners may devise. It's that nobody except a few Christian groups and members of human rights organizations gives a shit about their hideous suffering. This attitude toward slavery seems to me to have reduced the politically correct notion of "respect" for other "cultures" to grotesque absurdity. Everybody: I'm hereby making it known that if i'm ever abducted, taken forcibly into slavery, I want to be freed. Thank you.