September 23, 2011

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Fromtotally not adrian

A "Social Contract" Is Not A Constitution

"[Elizabeth Warren's] supporters are enthusiastic because she is in essence pleading natural law in defense of Obama's tax policies. It's pretty good natural law, too. Parts of it sound conservative. She appeals to "the social contract" as opposed to the libertarian precept. She says that capitalists are greedy, which they are, and that they ought to have more sympathy for the rest of us who built the social order that allows them to get rich. Time to give some back. What's wrong with that?

"Well, to start with, social contracts aren't Constitutions. They Social Contract is a convenient fiction, but in fact there isn't one, and to the extent that there is anything like one, Thomas Hobbes comes a lot closer to the agreement that creates a state than Rousseau or even Thomas Aquinas. Social Contracts sound great, but you can't sit down and read the Social Contract. Constitutions are specific....

"Constitutions try to limit government. Social contracts may be seen as a limit of government power or as an empowerment, depending on your point of view." -- Social Contract and Constitutions | Jerry Pournelle


Contagion

"We’ve got a lot of sad people walking around who like to engage in a belief that individual effort is futile, that individual success is an impossibility and a nullity. They don’t want to face up to the fact that somebody else did something better than they did. They’d rather engage in a systemic belief that there is no prosperity, there is only a state of being “rich” which means you must’ve ripped someone off.

"That’s what makes them so incredibly dangerous. They are not trying to foment revolution of any kind. Revolutions can fail. They aren’t in the midst of a revolution, they’re in the midst of a sickness. They’re using narcissism to self-medicate their sickness, reaching for it, just like an alcoholic reaches for the next shot of bourbon." -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by Vanderleun at September 23, 2011 6:15 AM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

She speaks in half-truths. The factory owner benefits from roads, fire, police, and schools that we built. Well no duh. The half-truth is removing the factory owner from that collective "we". The factory owner is part of the we that paid for the roads, schools, fire, and police and has as much right as the rest of us to use those social goods.* That is why those goods are never counted when someone is described as a self-made man - everybody benefits from those social goods, no is excluded from the benefit, and everyone contributes.

Nice to see another Democrat calling on class warfare while decrying her opponents calling it class warfare. A very disingenuous woman who should be kept as far away from political power as water is kept from electricity.

*And has probably paid a heck of a lot towards those social goods. Check the status of local roads, police, fire, and schools after the factory has shut down. Pretty much sucks, right?

Posted by: Mikey NTH at September 23, 2011 7:06 AM

Oh hell no, I am NOT taking responsibility… for that six dollar haircut on little Lizzy’s pointy little head.

Posted by: tim at September 23, 2011 7:39 AM

Lol, good one Tim.

Once upon a time, there was such a thing as a "blanket party". No, not a "party" party, but a group of Marines working at a task. In any group of fifty odd souls, there is at least one notorious fuck-up who can't wrap his noodle around the elemental truths that everyone need obey. The expeditious way to focus the fuck-up is to clearly and painfully let him know that he is outside the group, and that he must fix his major malfunction. After taps, a couple guys would grab the blanket on each side of his rack pinning the fuck-up down, and several others would beat said individual with a bar of soap swung inside a wool boot sock. Subsequently, he'd either get his head right, or go in the shower and slit his wrists, either way it worked. Liz needs a blanket party. Alas, such things happened long ago, and far away.

Posted by: Casca at September 23, 2011 8:17 AM

Okey, dokey. By extension of her 'logic', part of her degree and position should be owed to me (hell, I contributed to the general welfare). I want mine, now! Cough it up.

Posted by: ed in texas at September 23, 2011 9:08 AM

She is not half-right, she is half-baked. Without the small band of factory owners and others quite like him, there is and has never been a need of government services. Quite the reverse. The peasant has always served the government.

W H Mallock
Equality is the death of progress. It is the small minority of men of ability who turn barbarism into civilization. Equality benefits no one. It frustrates men of talent; and it reduces the poor to a poverty still more abject.
Man is not a laboring animal naturally: without especial incentive, he works as little as will enable him to sustain life.
Individual genius is a tremendous social force; and the talents of great men save the poor from sinking into barbarism. Reduce great men, or merely men of energy and talent, to the boredom of equality, and you reduce the mass of men proportionately.

Posted by: james wilson at September 23, 2011 9:22 AM

Let's stop empowering Marxists by calling them Democrats. Please.

Posted by: ahem at September 23, 2011 10:02 AM

I agree with ahem. But the problem is narcissism is the American way now. What about me what about me... We're all guilty of it. But the Marxists know how to capitalize on it and milk it and incite it. That is what she is doing here. Nothing more, nothing less. We just can't seem to accept how simply moronic it is. Childsplay. Literally. And when the bulk of the good people in America, or the world at large, see it, know it isn't right but lack courage to speak out, lack the integrity to heed our calls to action, we are left with a very real possiblility that Obama will enjoy a second term of terror.

Posted by: RedCarolina at September 23, 2011 10:50 AM

Agree about the social contract. It is not written, it is not defined, it is not agreed upon.

Therefore it can mean anything the person or group with the most power decides it means at the moment. A blank check.

As are economic and social justice.

Posted by: KTWO at September 23, 2011 12:09 PM

I like it, Morgan.

Posted by: philmon at September 23, 2011 12:13 PM

"Let's stop empowering Marxists by calling them Democrats"

Now there's a bumpersticker that needs to be mass-produced.

Posted by: philmon at September 23, 2011 12:16 PM

Oops!

Isn't it amazing how these smug rich progressives don't walk the walk?

Posted by: BJM at September 23, 2011 11:49 PM

Social contracts shift and change depending on who has the strongest personality living in the said apartment.

Its just a convenient way of saying "Hey, we took a vote and we say that your stuff is now ours. Majority rules. Sorry."

Posted by: Cond0010 at September 24, 2011 6:54 AM

I'd like to nominate this "Everywhere Ya Look" napalm whoopass-canopening upon the hapless Ms. Warren as the most encouraging Internet event in 2011. It's wonderful. It's like watching a beloved household pet come back from death's door after the veterinarian told you no-can-do. Keep 'em coming.

Posted by: Morgan K Freeberg at September 24, 2011 12:09 PM

Our Declaration of Independence, the architect of our Constitutional Democracy, grants only Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. There were no guarantees, no social contracts, just these three unalienable rights. Our Constitution and the Bill of Rights expanded on these, but again, no guarantees of wealth, or prosperity and certainly no contract for anything. I yearn for our once simple and less obtrusive government that maintained domestic peace and tranquility and let us seek our unalienable rights without interference.

Posted by: Tom at September 24, 2011 1:45 PM