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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (45620)	2/25/2006 9:31:15 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

“I suppose I could but since I haven't said it once your statement is rather silly." Again, you are just not "getting" it. I have established the case that breaking rules in the general course undermines the structure of the game and shows a disregard for the other players. Society may exist on the rules of a dictator, or it may utilize the democratic process and the principles of human rights and freedoms to formulate rules. You change or violate the rules and you change or violate the game. Perhaps I can help you to understand this simple concept through the use of analogy. Instead of us looking at democratic society, which is primarily the embodiment of a set of rules (in accordance with a process of input and decision) to the end of peaceful and beneficial co-existence, let us look at a baseball game. Here we have a group of people participating in an activity in which rules and regulations govern the manner in which the participants behave. Now let us introduce someone who is contemptuous of this commonality and disdainful of this agreement. He hasn't "signed" anything so he claims he really doesn't feel obligated to play fairly using the rules of baseball. After he gets 3 balls he decides to walk to first. This undermines the rules of the game . Of course, if it becomes a popular variant of baseball it might become mainstream and the deviant might be credited with a novel improvement.--but this is by no means assured and, in any event, has no relevance. In this case he will be removed from the team and prevented from playing baseball until he has benefited from the lesson that he does not act alone within the group but must honor the agreement he assumes in playing the game. In a similar manner, individuals are removed from mainstream society when their actions threaten the stability of that society. The breaking of rules is, of course, a threat to democratic stability and the maintenance of moral equity (as I have been telling you for some time, now). It offends society and is thus termed an offense against society. Major offenses are termed criminal and invite a response consistent with the attack or threat. Now it seems to me that you are incapable of making the intellectual connection between breaking the rules and affecting the game. I characterized this tiresome denial of yours as equivalent to failing to comprehend the proposition that breaking the rules is breaking the rules. You call this “silly” but I am only trying to help you understand a point. "Not by any definition I accept." I used Webster's. I will be unable to discuss that point with you if you cannot accept standard terminology. So that topic is dead in the water. "None of that means I am party to an agreement." What I said was that the law holds you accountable for agreements entered into on your behalf. This was to counter your assertion that: "I don't think that I am obligated by an agreement that I have not actually made". But the law does legally bind you to these agreements. Webster's--OBLIGATE...to bind legally or morally . To anticipate more of your evasion and obfuscation…the word “or” renders the entire proposition correct if either part of the conjunction is a fact. The degree to which you have or have not exercised your democratic right to inform the agreement does not excuse you from the agreement. "Certainly I could. I wouldn't and I didn't, so once again your statement is silly, but of course it would be possible to argue that. I would find it a rather silly argument myself" Stop being ridiculous, Tim. The laws are legally binding on you just as they are for everyone else. Therefore you are OBLIGATED. Therefore your statement, "I don't think that I am obligated by an agreement that I have not actually made" simply shows that you need to adjust your thinking. The law is binding for you just as for everyone else. You are bound legally to the law (see definition of “obligated” above) and naturally you are bound morally to it as it is the standard of correct behavior decided upon by democratic process at any one point in time.