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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (117602)	6/1/2005 7:26:19 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794046

I'm talking about the holding of an absolute value or just the idea that there are absolute values, not the metaphysics of absolute values. Even if we are to consider the belief in absolute values in general, or in a specific absolute value, to be false, it doesn't change the fact that some people hold absolute values. You said "Communists are left totalitarians but there are right totalitarians, too. Whenever those of one POV wants to ignore other POVs, they wax nostalgic about how easy it would be to do things their way if they didn't have to bother taking into consideration those who think otherwise. The same can be seen on a personal level with anyone who is a control freak or has absolute values" and "The problem with absolute moral values (and I'm disappointed that Krauthammer doesn't seem to recogize it) is that they are inherently authoritarian" and "If a people in a single or dependent cultures have contradictory ideas of what values are absolute, then we have war." If "an absolute value" is defined by my first definition - "A value held to be true for everyone in every circumstance whether or not they recognize it to be true." Than none of those apply. That doesn't change even if the holding of the value to be absolute, or even that values can be absolute, is false. You don't believe in absolute values by that definition, so I doubt you are talking about a value that really is absolute. From the beginning we have been talking about the belief in an absolute value. Such beliefs can be connected to totalitarianism, authoritarian governments, or war, but they are not intrinsically or automatically connected to any of them. Tim