Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Bald, Boldfaced Moral Equivalence

In a recent comment exchange at another blog, an (unsurprisingly anonymous) respondent said this, directed at me:
Under Communism man exploits man. Under Capitalism its(sic) the other way around.

Also Capitalism has transmuted into Corporate Fuedalism.
(sic)
There's a tremendous, horrifying moral equivalence to that first two-sentence quip. Certainly "man exploits man" in each system, but the underlying snarky implication is that both systems are equally flawed merely because "man exploits man."

What unmitigated horseshit. What a puerile, half-witted thing to say, especially if one actually means it.

I thought about firing off an irate response, but I figured A) it would have been useless because the poster probably was ignorant and didn't really understand the reality behind that first little agitprop quip, and B) it was better to make a point for anyone else reading who thought, "Yeah, Man! Tell it like it is!" or whatever the modern vernacular is. (I believe it condenses down now to the single syllable: "WORD!", but I could be mistaken. Modern vernacular changes so fast these days.)

So I replied:
Hmm..Under communism man slaughters man (to the tune of around 100,000,000 souls last century.) Under capitalism (in a democratic government), some people are poor but nobody starves to death. Particularly, nobody starves to death because somebody in the government thinks it's necessary that they do.

Makes the choice a bit easier, doesn't it?

Corporate feudalism? And just who is bound to the corporation as master? Examples?
The poster and I have mutually agreed to not clog another blogger's comments with our discussion, but as of yet I have received no response to my invitation to continue either here or in email.

I am not surprised about that, either.

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