(September 20, 2013 at 3:33 pm)Koolay Wrote: But you can't call it 'care' and 'education' if it's forced. Children are forced to be with the government, so calling it 'education' is the wrong word. It is forced, so it is propaganda, by definition.

Two words: private school.

There is a sense of propaganda in our schools education system. Obviously you can't propagandize subjects such as math, but you certainly can with English and History (especially History). Personally when I look back at my high school history classes it is easy to realize that with the exception of slavery and the civil rights movement, rarely if ever is the U.S. put in a bad spotlight. I didn't learn about things such as the Gulf of Tonkin at my school, I had to learn those things on my own.

And you don't have to hate the government to look at a whole classroom of children mindlessly repeating the pledge of allegiance (does a 9 year old really understand what allegiance is?) every day and be able to spot indoctrination.

Don't get me wrong, I am ultimately in favor of public education but the system we have in place now is what causes blind patriotism and nationalism.

(September 21, 2013 at 5:13 am)gilbertc06 Wrote: I think the real question is whether or not we should take certain individual's rights away.

We should not, because morality has to be universal in order to be valid. You can not say a certain group of people have opposite rules of morality to another group of people as you can say math changes depending on what day it is.

(September 21, 2013 at 3:38 pm)Koolay Wrote:

(September 21, 2013 at 5:13 am)gilbertc06 Wrote: I think the real question is whether or not we should take certain individual's rights away.

We should not, because morality has to be universal in order to be valid. You can not say a certain group of people have opposite rules of morality to another group of people as you can say math changes depending on what day it is.

(September 21, 2013 at 3:38 pm)Koolay Wrote:

(September 21, 2013 at 5:13 am)gilbertc06 Wrote: I think the real question is whether or not we should take certain individual's rights away.

We should not, because morality has to be universal in order to be valid. You can not say a certain group of people have opposite rules of morality to another group of people as you can say math changes depending on what day it is.

Sure you can. It is moral to let people function freely who seem unlikely to do others harm. It is immoral to let confirmed murderes do the same.

If you are engaged in a war, it is moral to kill enemy soldiers. It is (usually) immoral to kill civilians, or anyone on your own side.

(September 21, 2013 at 7:24 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(September 21, 2013 at 3:38 pm)Koolay Wrote: We should not, because morality has to be universal in order to be valid. You can not say a certain group of people have opposite rules of morality to another group of people as you can say math changes depending on what day it is.

Sure you can. It is moral to let people function freely who seem unlikely to do others harm. It is immoral to let confirmed murderes do the same.

If you are engaged in a war, it is moral to kill enemy soldiers. It is (usually) immoral to kill civilians, or anyone on your own side.

Let's talk about that for a second. If you are in a war, it is moral to kill enemy soldiers?

Granted I think it's moral for someone to defend yourself from physical harm even if you have to kill someone. So if you were face to face with an enemy soldier and they were trying to shoot you then yeah it would be moral to kill them.

But what blurs the lines is the notion of war. Today war is declared not by soldiers themselves but by people above them in the hierarchy. Those people are the ones who declare war and they are the ones who decide who or what your enemy is. Now assuming that they are human beings they are by default not infallible.

So if you depend SOLELY on their word that a certain person or group is an enemy it may not be moral.

(September 22, 2013 at 2:23 am)gilbertc06 Wrote:

(September 21, 2013 at 7:24 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Sure you can. It is moral to let people function freely who seem unlikely to do others harm. It is immoral to let confirmed murderes do the same.

If you are engaged in a war, it is moral to kill enemy soldiers. It is (usually) immoral to kill civilians, or anyone on your own side.

Let's talk about that for a second. If you are in a war, it is moral to kill enemy soldiers?

Granted I think it's moral for someone to defend yourself from physical harm even if you have to kill someone. So if you were face to face with an enemy soldier and they were trying to shoot you then yeah it would be moral to kill them.

But what blurs the lines is the notion of war. Today war is declared not by soldiers themselves but by people above them in the hierarchy. Those people are the ones who declare war and they are the ones who decide who or what your enemy is. Now assuming that they are human beings they are by default not infallible.

So if you depend SOLELY on their word that a certain person or group is an enemy it may not be moral.

Normally, when we talk about a social contract, we are talking about the mutual agreement to benefit others. But there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a mutual agreement to harm and be harmed, especially given the fuckfest that is 7 billion people, most of whom are little more than eating, fucking, shitting machines.

Now, American wars are different. There's unlikely to be a mutual agreement in which a man permits the US to cruise-missile bomb his family home, given that he has the right to throw WWII army-surplus grenades at them as they fly by. That's a pretty shitty contract. But if you have lines of Yanks and Confederates lined up with flag-bearers and trumpets, ready to test their respective fates, there's nothing immoral about pulling the trigger.

As for whether it's immoral to decide on your own whether to engage in war-- I don't think soldiers have that right. Drafted civilians might, but even then you have the case of Socrates-- not liking the law, and being horribly misused by that law, but accepting that the individual self must be subjected to the will of the whole.

I do not know who said it first, but I'm convinced koolay is the forgetten son of ayn rand and xiao deng peng.

(September 23, 2013 at 2:49 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: I do not know who said it first, but I'm convinced koolay is the forgetten son of ayn rand and xiao deng peng.

That's an insult to Rand. And Peng.