When Did It Become Unconstitutional?

James Hanley in reply to Pierre Corneille says:

you’d prefer the absence of any laws restricting any liberties to any set of laws restricting some liberties. Is that right?

I read Jaybird very differently. “Erring on the side of” doesn’t, to me, seem to indicate “none. period.” rather than “some, but very little and very cautiously.”

Jaybird’s not (if I’m reading him correctly) making an absolutist claim, yet you (if I’m reading you correctly) are imputing an absolutist claim to him. Because “any set of laws restricting some liberties” is essentially an infinite set of possibilities, and you’re saying he is a priori rejecting every single one of the possibilities in that infinite set. But saying he’d rather make the error of too much liberty rather than too little liberty != absolute unrestricted-in-any-sense liberty.

And I can’t see a reasonable reading that gets you there.Report

James Hanley in reply to Pierre Corneille says:

@Jaybird,
We will never see Anacapatopia.
Ewww. I’ve camped on Anacapa. Place smells like bird shit and there’s no source of fresh water. Funny place for a utopia.

I’m more irritated that we’re on 49 on this ratchet.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I rarely understand your train of thought, I’m afraid, but I totally and completely understand this.

“Do you think eating meat is bad for your health?”
“Dude, focus! I’m tied to a freakin’ train track!”Report

James Hanley in reply to Pierre Corneille says:

Stillwater,

That’s very Hobbesian, but if that’s the basis for your claims then it needs to be true. And there is reason to doubt the accuracy of that history, or at least whether it presents anything like a complete picture.Report

James Hanley in reply to Stillwater says:

Actually, it looked to me like you were the one doing that. I suppose that theoretically I do have an objection, but we’ve been over that ground often enough that I won’t bother. I just wanted to note how curiously ineffectual the attempted poke was.Report

James Hanley in reply to Rod Engelsman says:

Rod, I agree. And that’s why Stillwater’s jab doesn’t land. It’s ultimately implying a straw man, that we don’t see any limit in liberty, ever, as justified.

It’s as though I snarked that liberals “could never be wrong about maximizing equality.” Folks would rightly point out that while equality is an exceptionally important value for liberals, they do recognize that it has it’s limits (thus, when we slip in references to Harrison Bergeron, there’s a critical response).

One of our League libertarians let me know yesterday that he’s leaving, at least for a while, both because a small number of commenters here have made it unbearable (not Stillwater, mind you) and because the arguments have come to seem like the movie Groundhog Day, and Stillwater’s comment here smacks of that, IMO.

I don’t expect the libertarians and liberals here to actually resolve their differences, but I would like to think that by now those of us who have been here a while would at least have come to agreement on understanding of what the other side believes. But after all this time to see a comment like Stillwater’s….He and I have debated enough that it boggles me that he’d still have such an inaccurate view about, or at least make such an inaccurate poke at, libertarians. And, hell, he demands ths libertarianism not be tht narrow, but anytime I personally am not that narrow–which I see as evidence that libertarians aren’t so narrow–I get a used of not being a true libertarian. It’s a nice Catch-22. I don’t know if it stems from a considered determination to not grant libertarians their actual beliefs, or if it’s a sign that humans are a hopeless group.

And maybe you liberals see us as doing the same thing. I can’t say I’d be surprised. I kind of hope you do, because then perhaps you’ll have context that helps my comment make sense to you.

It would be great if we could come to some common understandings about what each side actually believes–not agreement with those beliefs, but agreement that those are in fact the other side’s actual beliefs. But to do that, some of us are going to need to stop trying to define the other side for our own convenience. Absent that, it will continue to be Groundhog Day, and there’ll be lots of smug self-congratulations, but no meaningful discussion or learning.

Honestly, as much as I enjoy a lot of the folks here, I’m on the verge of joining my fellow libertarian in walking away, because it’s deeply unpleasant being in the minority and constantly staring down lies about oneself, when one has repeatedly tried to correct those lies.Report

James Hanley in reply to Rod Engelsman says:

Fortunately, the League’s liberals regularly admit they’re wrong about liberal principles, so this is solely a libertarian problem.

Sigh.

See, this is what I mean about trying to understand what each side believes without having to agree with those beliefs.

The fact that you liberals can’t persuade libertarians to change their beliefs no more implies that libertarianism is tautological or that none of it can be shown to be wrong than libertarians’ inability to persuade liberals to change their beliefs implies that liberalism is tautological or that none of it can be shown to be wrong.

Just because you firmly believe there’s an error doesn’t mean you have demonstrated it in an objective way that requires any right-thinking person to agree. We’re not talking about evolution vs. creationism here, or about whether Obama won the presidency fairly or stole it through a Muslim communo-fascist plot. The fundamental disagreements are over values, and those aren’t subject to objective determinations of truth/falsity.

Yes, we libertarians tend to value liberty even more highly than liberals do, who of course value it highly themselves. That means we don’t find exceptions to it to be justifiable as often as liberals do. That doesn’t mean all libertarians see it as overriding every over value in every single instance at all times under every conceivable circumstance, just as it doesn’t mean all liberals see those other values as always overriding liberty in every single instance, etc., etc.

It’s a point we’ve made repeatedly, ad nauseum, and still you don’t seem to grok it. We shouldn’t have to make an explicit statement of it each time we talk about wanting to maximize liberty; by now you really should just understand that our maximization does include some limits, just a lot fewer than your approach would.

Just because we don’t say it explicitly every time doesn’t mean we actually don’t mean it–it’s always there, as a baseline assumption. I think any reasonably charitable person by now would grant us that and stop implying differently. A lot of other liberals here have–probably most of them. So why can’t you? Why can’t you just drop the “Oh, liberty is the only thing to you guys” schtick, since that in fact is something that is demonstrably untrue?Report

James Hanley in reply to Rod Engelsman says:

Dave,

You can use the email address in my comments.Report