Re:Why Are Millennials Wary of Freedom?
by didibus on Tuesday October 17, 2017 @03:50AM
(#15489297)
> There are two different kinds of freedom here: The freedom for society to govern itself and the freedom of the individual.
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> My belief is that a society can exist where society is unfree (due to say a dictator) but individuals are free (a fair set of laws is in place that causes minimal harm/maximal good). This society is just as free if not more free than a democracy.
Therefore, democracy is not freedom.
Well, I'd be okay with your distinction if you didn't contradict yourself here. Is the society free or not?
It appears to me like you're suggesting that a dictator who valued individual rights could create a society where the people in it have no recourse short of a forceful overrule to change they're rights, but who'se forced upon rights are vast and very generous. So you'd classify this as an unfree society, but one where freedoms are given to individuals.
But that would mean that dictatorship is not free, and thus not equal to freedom or a free society. While democracy is free, and thus equal to a free society. And that ones individual rights is almost a fully orthogonal concept. Which is what I personally believe. And why I think both are important to maintain. Individual and human rights must be fought for, and made law, protected against strongly. Yet society need also be free, and democracy is the best implementation of a free society we have.
Now sure, in a unrealistic scenario, where a dictator would give me almost idealistic individual rights, yet the neighboring democracy would give me subpar individual rights, I might prefer individual rights over it. But that example is just ridiculous. In practice, this has never happened, and that choice doesn't exist. But I take your point was that individual rights might trump a fare election system, and I think I'd agree with that. But again, I see that in practice, one is rarely there without the other, probably because most people who value individual rights, also value the freedom to choose who govern them.
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> My belief is that a society can exist where society is unfree (due to say a dictator) but individuals are free (a fair set of laws is in place that causes minimal harm/maximal good). This society is just as free if not more free than a democracy. Therefore, democracy is not freedom.
Well, I'd be okay with your distinction if you didn't contradict yourself here. Is the society free or not?
It appears to me like you're suggesting that a dictator who valued individual rights could create a society where the people in it have no recourse short of a forceful overrule to change they're rights, but who'se forced upon rights are vast and very generous. So you'd classify this as an unfree society, but one where freedoms are given to individuals.
But that would mean that dictatorship is not free, and thus not equal to freedom or a free society. While democracy is free, and thus equal to a free society. And that ones individual rights is almost a fully orthogonal concept. Which is what I personally believe. And why I think both are important to maintain. Individual and human rights must be fought for, and made law, protected against strongly. Yet society need also be free, and democracy is the best implementation of a free society we have.
Now sure, in a unrealistic scenario, where a dictator would give me almost idealistic individual rights, yet the neighboring democracy would give me subpar individual rights, I might prefer individual rights over it. But that example is just ridiculous. In practice, this has never happened, and that choice doesn't exist. But I take your point was that individual rights might trump a fare election system, and I think I'd agree with that. But again, I see that in practice, one is rarely there without the other, probably because most people who value individual rights, also value the freedom to choose who govern them.