RE: The Social Democratic Case Against Anarchism
Part 2:
You said: “In the case of homophobia, fighting for either side is ideological - and anyone from either side forcing people to think their way on that topic is not cool, and I don't appreciate the deliberate agenda to normalize it.”
It’s not a matter of ideology! It’s a matter of fact! I believe in universal and objective morality. That means that certain things are truly right and certain things are truly wrong. Whether or not homosexuality is wrong is a matter of fact, not a matter of tastes. The religious person says ‘God exists and hates sodomy and will punish homosexual acts, therefore homosexual acts are wrong.’ These are claims about reality, not just opinions or tastes. Does God actually exist? Does He actually abhor sodomy? Those statements are either true or false. This fight isn’t just “ideological” opinion abstracted from reality. Whether or not homosexuality is immoral is a matter of FACT. If God does not exist; and mankind evolved through natural selection via survival of the fittest; and homosexuality doesn’t actually cause others to suffer, then homosexuality is absolutely not immoral. In that case, the fact is that homosexuality is NOT immoral. If God does exist, He did ban gay sex, and homosexuals really will be punished for eternity in the afterlife, then the fact is that homosexuality is immoral. Either way, it is a matter of fact. One side is correct and the other side is wrong. One side needs to be educated and the other side needs to try to educate them!
Personally, I’m an atheist, after having been Christian and having studied theology and religious apologetics for years. For my arguments against Christianity, check out An Atheistic Critique of Christian Apologetics. For an overview of my theory of ethics, explaining how ethics can be constructed scientifically, see my Steemit series on Ethics.
You said: “...starting to discredit people standing up for freedom of speech.”
There is no war on free speech, at least, not in the way that people on the right want you to think. I think the problem here is that people are mixing up two separate issues: (1) whether people ought to have the right to free speech, and (2) whether the freedom of speech entails the right to a platform. People have the right to free speech, but the Alt-Right is a bunch of fascist fucks that are trying to force people to give them a platform. Ohio State, Auburn University, Penn State, and Michigan State all refused to give Richard Spencer a platform because the content of his speeches is likely to cause riots. When Richard Spencer spoke at the University of Florida, the Florida Highway Patrol billed them $302,000 for security costs. When people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer speak at universities, they cause the university to incur high security costs. The Alt-Right is not just demanding free speech; they are demanding the right to a platform and they are demanding for universities to pay for the security costs associated with their speeches. You have the right to say whatever the hell you want, but you don’t necessarily have the right to use university property or private property as a platform to do so.
Furthermore, counter-protests don’t violate the right to free speech. You have the right to express your opinion, and so do the people that disagree with you. The counter-protesters have the right to shout down hate speech, just as much as the Alt-Right has to propagate hate speech. In 90% of cases, no one on the left is actually violating or fighting against the free speech of the Alt-Right. Counter-protesting, denying a platform on university property to members of the Alt-Right, and even screaming at people does not violate their right to free speech. If Milo Yiannopoulos is an asshole, and I decide to be an asshole back by yelling over him, that doesn’t violate his free speech. I have as much a right to exercise my free speech as he does to exercise his. (For the record, I don’t mean to imply that Milo is as bad as Spencer; Spencer is more blatantly genocidal and racist, whereas Milo is more like a drunk relative being a dick.)
Also, freedom of speech does have limitations. For instance, it is illegal to go into a crowded theatre and yell “fire!” when you know that there is no fire. Doing so will cause a stampede for the door, people will be trampled and injured, maybe some will die. Thus, speech can be criminal if one knowingly incites a riot or something like that. Furthermore, take the instance of Charles Manson. Manson was imprisoned for his crimes. Most people agree that he was evil and dangerous and needed to be punished (or at least confined so that he couldn’t do any more harm). Manson had the ability to sort of hypnotize and manipulate people, brainwash them even. What made Manson’s trial interesting was the fact that Manson did not actually kill any of the people himself. In reality, he just told other people to do it, and they obeyed him because of his charismatic persona. He wasn’t in a position of authority over his followers, and they weren’t necessarily afraid of him, but they were manipulated into obeying him through psychological trickery. He didn’t actually kill people, but he did give the orders. His real crime was something he said (i.e. telling someone that they should kill someone else). Also, there are other instances when you would probably agree that censoring a person is not necessarily a violation of their right to free speech. For instance, if a person walks into a synagogue during Saturday worship and starts yelling anti-Semitic slurs, the people have a right to throw that person out of the synagogue. If a man is attending a lecture or a play, and he begins shouting at the speaker or actors, his right to free speech doesn’t apply: the owner of the venue has the right to throw him out. If it is 2am, early in the morning, and I walk outside and start yelling, waking up all my neighbors, and shouting about whatever the hell is on my mind, then people have a right to come shut me up. That’s called disturbing the peace, and it is an instance when your right to free speech is overruled. And it doesn’t matter whether I’m on my own private property or on public property, I don’t have a right to scream and yell and keep people awake all night.
You said: “The people who "Dont know any better" is a very ignorant comment. I find most people who defend democracy all of a sudden shift tunes when I speak of DIRECT DEMOCRACY because they don't trust the general population - recall that churchill quote about the average voter. If you think that people "dont know any better" and that your values should be coerced, well then, thats not democratic. What if 51% of the people said so, then YOU wouldnt know any better right?”
When I said, “they don’t know any better,” I was not making an ignorant comment. I was merely stating a fact. The reality is that a large part of the populace is ignorant. Hopefully the majority are not. However, it is often the case that people with like minds and similar cultures flock together. Thus, the majority in a certain small town or area could very well be ignorant. That’s why I think the votes of the majority of people who are not bigots ought to override the votes of the bigots in the form of urban liberals overriding rural racists, etc. It’s still majoritarian democracy, and it can even be direct democracy.
I like direct democracy, and like digital direct democracy in particular. However, I do think there are instances when decisions need to be made on complicated issues only after long deliberation. I tend to agree with Edmund Burke on this point, that sometimes decisions need to be made by people who listened to all the arguments and participated in all the discussions. If there are meetings on town planning, to discuss some pressing issue, then there ought to be much deliberation, debate, and discussion. The people that took part in the discussion and listened to the various sides of the debate and heard the various arguments—those are the people that should vote on it. If some such topic is debated within the context of a parliament, council, or congress of delegates or representatives, then it would be best for only the delegates/representatives to vote rather than allowing the people to vote directly, since the people did not all listen to the arguments and would therefore not be in a position to make the most rational choice. Suppose that the people all agree that there ought to be taxes and that the taxes ought to fund defense, only stipulating that the tax shall be the least burdensome tax sufficient for funding the defense of the territory (it is quite possible for people to reach such a consensus in smaller polities, like Rojava)—the people have consented—but now the people go back to work and the administrators are left to implement the policy agreed upon. It may be best to have representatives assemble in a deliberative assembly and discuss how to go about implementing the policy. The deliberative assembly will thoroughly discuss the issue of how much defense is needed, debating all the finer points, then they will determine the cost of that defense (i.e. how much tax revenue they need to fund defense), and then they must determine the least burdensome way of collecting said taxes (shall it be a flat income tax, progressive income tax, flat sales tax, value added tax, land value tax?). The representatives would discuss all of these matters, determine what is most consistent, in their own estimation, with the mandate that they were given by their constituents, and then vote in favor of that. So, the representatives, after deliberation, may decide that land value tax is the least burdensome way of collecting tax. And that decision ought to be made not by the people at home who did not listen to all the arguments for and against it, but by the representatives that did listen to the debates that took place.