Two types of arguments...One is Forward from a time tested principle and the other is Backward from a precieved consequence.

Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 1 month ago to Philosophy
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However, both sides in political debates can use both kinds of argument. And, in fact, modern conservatives, as they move further away from traditional-values issues which involve the application of eternal principles (such as the sanctity of life and marriage), are now as consequence-based in their reasoning as liberals. And liberals, as they have taken up what they believe to be universal principles (equality, tolerance, diversity), are becoming more principle-based in their argumentation.

The problem with the leftest principles is 1 they are not tolerant, 2 the equality only applies to outcome and 3 diversity applies only if They get the Votes.

But I digress...really really digress. I still prefer to just call them stupid or ask them, "who the hell ties your shoelaces? as opposed to arguing forward.
SOURCE URL: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/conservative-vs-liberal-logic-comparison


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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 1 month ago
    This is an old and false dichotomy. It is true that these two modes of thinking are each valid. It is a broader abstraction that both must be employed to discover truth rather than that which is merely valid.

    Leonard Peikoff attacked this problem well in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy." It was an essay in The Objectivist and then was added as an appendix to later editions of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

    For something to be true it must be empirically observable and rationally explicable. For a theory to be true, it must be internally consistent (rational) and externally valid (sensible). The rational-empirical method is the scientific method and its traditional name is objectivism. Capital-O Objectivism is a modern explanation of that, more complete, more integrated, developed by Ayn Rand, and those who worked with her and followed her.

    The problem with the "conservatives" and their "time-tested principles" is that those ideas were never rationally established and therefore are not internally consistent. Similarly, the problem with the "liberals" and their "universal principles" is that they ignore the facts as history repeatedly disproves their claims that equality of outcome can be instantiated.

    The objective theory of the just society is a unification of observation and explanation: undeniable facts, rationally explained. Proposals for change, for instance to laissez faire economics, are the result of logic applied to experience.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 1 month ago
      It may be a false dichotomy but it's what we observe these days.
      I see time tested principles like, all men are created equal, rationally established, however we may have been created equal but our behaviors and level of conscious introspection's may indicate otherwise; but we understand the statement as the ideal.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 1 month ago
        Apparently, you and I understand the statement "All men are created equal" differently.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 1 month ago
          It's not that we ARE equal...it's that we each have equal opportunity...it's what we do with that opportunity. I suppose also, some would think the ideal is that we all start from the same place...but when you get into, mental health, the ability to learn, (or see only in pictures or words or both_ laughing) health in general, genetics etc...it doesn't apply.
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          • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 1 month ago
            I agree with what you said and are saying. We are on the same page culturally here and now. But I understand a very specific contextual meaning in "all men are created equal." Of course "men" includes "women." For the Founders, it did not. Women could not own real estate (generally; some exceptions). However, they lived in a world of nobility and royalty. (Serfdom was largely gone.) They also lived with slavery - which they could not deal with in that document.

            We forget what that was like. However, everyone who has served in the U.S. military knows that officers are a different class with different privileges and rights. That is a holdover from the British class system. In the UK they still have that socially, though the legality has been eroded. Accused of a crime, a noble is no longer tried only by nobles.

            We still say "jury of your peers" but that is not in the Bill of Rights. Peerage does not apply in America.

            That is all that "all men are created equal" can mean, because, obviously, we are each of us unique. Democracy - ultimately socialism, including fascism - makes us all interchangeable and therefore disposable.
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            • Posted by $ 7 years, 1 month ago
              That last line is exactly what we are seeing today.

              I hated that part of the Army because I saw a lot of incompetence in the upper ranks and you couldn't call em out.

              I did find that women could own property after studying David Bartons collection of documents but there weren't many women with the means to do so. But if anyone owned property they could vote, that applied to Black Americans too and those that participated in the Revolution got a government pension as well...and there were many...something the progressives tried to erase.
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