Pinochet or Allende? (user search)
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  Pinochet or Allende? (search mode)
Pages: [1]
Poll
Question: ?
#1
Pinochet
 
#2
Allende
 
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Partisan results

Total Voters: 101

Author Topic: Pinochet or Allende?  (Read 3265 times)
Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 58,269
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
« on: January 15, 2022, 06:05:04 AM »

Like with the Uyghur genocide question, there is one clear answer here and answering otherwise or equivocating immediately outs you as someone not worth listening to.


I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

It is.

A better argument for you would have been that Allende never won 50.1% of the vote in an election, but of course this is all pretty irrelevant given the alternative.
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Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 58,269
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2022, 03:50:20 PM »

I didn't realize you were so ideologically wedded to democracy. Why should a majority have free rein to take away the rights of the minority?

There should be some limits on a majority's power, obviously, but that shouldn't require establishing an absolute right to all private property that trumps any other consideration of public utility. The right to property, like every right, ought to be balanced out with other rights that the state guarantees (including positive rights). Absolute rights are absurd in concept and destructive in practice.


Quote
Mind you, I hate Pinochet and people who defend him. I'm just arguing this particular point.

That's genuinely a relief. You never know with yellow avatars.
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Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 58,269
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2022, 05:05:09 PM »

I didn't realize you were so ideologically wedded to democracy. Why should a majority have free rein to take away the rights of the minority?

There should be some limits on a majority's power, obviously, but that shouldn't require establishing an absolute right to all private property that trumps any other consideration of public utility. The right to property, like every right, ought to be balanced out with other rights that the state guarantees (including positive rights). Absolute rights are absurd in concept and destructive in practice.

Do you believe that any rights are absolute? I wouldn't expect you to oppose property rights violations in principle, but surely there are other basic human rights that you take an absolute position on (fair trials, unjust confinement, freedom of speech, etc).

Freedom of speech is most definitely not absolute. It's actually my go-to example for why absolute rights are untenable, and I'm convinced that even most people who call themselves "free speech absolutists" are aware of it deep down. At the very least, most people tend to agree that overtly calling for the murder of a specific person should be criminally punishable, and that other types of speech closely related to the commission of serious crimes should give rise to some criminal liability of some kind. Beyond those obvious examples, there are many concrete cases where I believe unfettered free speech ends up doing more harm than good. This is especially the case in situations where the ability to speak is highly unequal to start with, and smaller speakers see their voices drowned out by the bigger ones (campaign financing, if you accept the framing that it is a speech issue to begin with, is a clear example of this problem). There are plenty of other aspects of the issue that we could get into, but you get the idea. Free speech is valuable and should be protected, but only up to a reasonable point.

Fair trials and unjust confinements are harder issues to tackle, partly I suspect because your framing here introduces something beyond just individual rights: both concept appeal to the notion of justice/fairness, which is, I'd argue, a more fundamental statement about how society ought to be organized than the notion of rights. Indeed, you could define an individual's rights as the prerogative that can justly be afforded an individual by a society. So, by that definition, yes, the right to fair trials and to avoid unjust punishment would be absolute, but that seems like begging the question. I guess if you were to specify a set of objective conditions for a trial to deemed just (presence of a counsel, jury of peers, etc. etc.), I might agree that an individual has a broad right to see these conditions upheld in a trial, but I'd still wonder if there might be circumstances in which it might be acceptable to waive them. A lawful society is certainly something to aspire to, but when the rule of law breaks down, there might be no choice but to step outside its bounds. I'm not trying to put too fine a point on it, though.

I'd add that even what we should agree is the most fundamental right of all, the right to life (what good is any other right without it?), has to waived in some circumstances. I oppose the death penalty, of course, but even I have to admit that the state sometimes has to kill people. The most defensible case is obviously when someone else's life is directly at stake: if person A is about to kill person B and the only way to stop them is to kill A, we agree that the state can waive A's right to life in the name of upholding B's. We accept that conclusion because it is A who created a situation whereby both rights couldn't be upheld simultaneously, but it nevertheless remains a situation where a fundamental right has to be violated in order to preserve another.
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