Where does american prudeism come from?

[NineSpine]

You are correct that American social conservatives have used centralized governmental power to enforce their world view in the past. The establishment of marriage licensees to prevent interracial couples from being able to marry in the Jim Crow South is a great example. Social conservatives are ruing the day now however because government has used the mandate govern marriage arrangements to validate same-sex marriage. In truth, the government should have no say who gets married, homosexual, interracial or otherwise. It is a lesson social conservatives are beginning to learn, and take to heart. Being in the minority has a way of teaching that lesson.

Please don't lecture me on what I believe. I happen to be the authority on that. It's not that social inequality is desirable or undesirable. It's that social inequality is a fact, and no system of government, nor matter how well intentioned, will ever change that. All we can expect of government, and barely at that, is that a system be enforced that allows for equal opportunity to succeed. Now can this system be corrupted by those with power and influence, absolutely, but so can any other governmental system so that is a wash. What you liberals want is not equal opportunity,but rather equality of results. I hate to break it to you, but not all people are equal. Now to be sure, skin color, ethnicity etc. are not the defining factors, but ambition, intelligence, drive, and a certain amount of luck are.

Hierarchy is defined as a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority. Bill Gates or Donald Trump making more money than you because they were smarter and worked harder is not a hierarchy. A federal bureaucracy deciding you get a job or placement in a school, or get a loan because of your skin color is. See the difference?

The idea that it isnt hierarchy unless government enforces it is a No True Scotsman fallacy. Heirarchy is heirarchy, and nowhere in the definition of it is "government".

All you are doing is restating what I said: You desire inequality. That's fine, and that is not an indefensible position to have. You can think attempts to undo inequality are destructive. That's a debate we can have. However, the fact is that you prefer policies which allow inequality, as opposed to policies which lessen it. This has nothing to do with who is right about which policies work.

[Elegiac]

I think you actually need to work in the other direction - why did Europe become much more open than traditional norms? The United States is probably somewhere in the ballpark of the world median when it comes to norms around sexuality, while Europe has become remarkably libertine.

With regard to a couple of your other specific questions, it's worth mentioning that a lot of what you said is just flatly inaccurate.

Religion.

Catholicism and Orthodoxy are more 'cultural traditions' at this point; going to mass and the like is the done thing socially, rather than actual zeal as found amongst Evangelical Protestants.

Moreover, Protestantism harps much more on individual mores whereas European Christianity is generally more 'it's ok if you do X because you can simply absolve yourself through worthy acts later'.

[NineSpine]

You have a deeply emotional hatred for the United States and it slants your view of history. You refuse to acknowledge that the world is inherently unstable regardless of our participation in it. I agree with you that the CIA has a pretty awful track record with regards to setting up puppet governments, but so does your blessed Soviet Union. Just be glad that the great game of the Cold War was fought in little proxy wars through puppet states instead of an all out conflict between the two powers. While tragedies certainly occurred in the former, it would have been insignificant to what would have occurred in the latter.

I don't see how the awfulness of the Soviet Union makes our terrible decisions into good decisions. Most of the proxy wars we engaged in in the Cold War had no effect on the outcome. We LOST the Vietnam war, and the Soviet Union was powerless by the time we started endlessly engaging in South American coups. Iran wasn't even run by communists. Your argument makes no sense. The Soviet Union imploded on its own, and the US had little to do with it in terms of proxy wars. This isn't even debated anymore in the modern historiography, because it is long settled.

The funny part is that you think I love the Soviet Union, but YOU are the one attributing to them this almost supernatural power over the world stage, and the ability to somehow force the US to make god awful decisions for half a century. The Soviet Union was never that powerful. Its capabilities were always overstated, and its system never worked. YOU have the high opinion of them, not me.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

The idea that it isnt hierarchy unless government enforces it is a No True Scotsman fallacy. Heirarchy is heirarchy, and nowhere in the definition of it is "government".

All you are doing is restating what I said: You desire inequality. That's fine, and that is not an indefensible position to have. You can think attempts to undo inequality are destructive. That's a debate we can have. However, the fact is that you prefer policies which allow inequality, as opposed to policies which lessen it. This has nothing to do with who is right about which policies work.

You and I are not operating under the same premises. You believe equality of result is possible, and can be created through application of a particular government system. I do not think equality of result is possible, and therefore support a system which allows those with the ability and desire to succeed with minimal interference. A system which rewards needs over that of ability, will produce many people with needs and few with any ability. You get from society what you reward.

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Religion.

Catholicism and Orthodoxy are more 'cultural traditions' at this point; going to mass and the like is the done thing socially, rather than actual zeal as found amongst Evangelical Protestants.

Moreover, Protestantism harps much more on individual mores whereas European Christianity is generally more 'it's ok if you do X because you can simply absolve yourself through worthy acts later'.

I think you'd get a different impression of Catholic zeal if you left dying Europe.

[Elegiac]

You and I are not operating under the same premises. You believe equality of result is possible, and can be created through application of a particular government system. I do not think equality of result is possible, and therefore support a system which allows those with the ability and desire to succeed with minimal interference. A system which rewards needs over that of ability, will produce many people with needs and few with any ability. You get from society what you reward.

There is a healthy medium to be had, point in fact. The lowest portion of society does not have to live in abject squalor for there to be reward of merit.

I think you'd get a different impression of Catholic zeal if you left dying Europe.

I live in the US at the moment, point in fact.

And I -vastly- prefer Catholicism and Orthodoxy than the Protestant branches you find in the United States.

[NineSpine]

You and I are not operating under the same premises. You believe equality of result is possible, and can be created through application of a particular government system. I do not think equality of result is possible, and therefore support a system which allows those with the ability and desire to succeed with minimal interference. A system which rewards needs over that of ability, will produce many people with needs and few with any ability. You get from society what you reward.

Exactly. YOU value inequality as the way you get to best results, and I do not. We each have opinions about why our ideas are better. You think minimizing inequality will have bad results, and that is a perfectly respectable opinion to have.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

This is fundamentally untrue.

If you are of the belief that competition rears up the 'virtuous' then you believe inequality is desirable.



The exercise of liberty aggravates inequality, so - no.

I'll say this, you have an accurate understanding of what centrally planned societies require. That is a lack of individual liberty. My question for you is do you believe that in a society where power is consolidated and individual liberty is held in check, power will be sought and held by those who will see to the welfare and happiness of their people? What is to be done with the portions of society which do not ascribe to the version of happiness and prosperity determined most appropriate by the power brokers? I think the estimated 70 million people killed by Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and the Khmer Rouge might be able to shed some light on that situation.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C.S. Lewis

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There is a healthy medium to be had, point in fact. The lowest portion of society does not have to live in abject squalor for there to be reward of merit.



I live in the US at the moment, point in fact.

And I -vastly- prefer Catholicism and Orthodoxy than the Protestant branches you find in the United States.

I agree on all counts. Let's have a beer.

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[Elegiac]

I'll say this, you have an accurate understanding of what centrally planned societies require. That is a lack of individual liberty. My question for you is do you believe that in a society where power is consolidated and individual liberty is held in check, power will be sought and held by those who will see to the welfare and happiness of their people?

That depends entirely on the institution in which said power is invested.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

Exactly. YOU value inequality as the way you get to best results, and I do not. We each have opinions about why our ideas are better. You think minimizing inequality will have bad results, and that is a perfectly respectable opinion to have.

I guess we are in violent agreement.

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That depends entirely on the institution in which said power is invested.

Institutions are made up of people. People, even the best people, eventually die. Those who replace them and inherit their power will not necessarily share their virtues. The benevolent monarch is undoubtedly the most efficient and just government of all. Unfortunately they are often succeeded by morons butchers or both. Dictatorships and narrow oligarchies are much the same.

[NineSpine]

I'll say this, you have an accurate understanding of what centrally planned societies require. That is a lack of individual liberty. My question for you is do you believe that in a society where power is consolidated and individual liberty is held in check, power will be sought and held by those who will see to the welfare and happiness of their people? What is to be done with the portions of society which do not ascribe to the version of happiness and prosperity determined most appropriate by the power brokers? I think the estimated 70 million people killed by Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and the Khmer Rouge might be able to shed some light on that situation.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C.S. Lewis

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I agree on all counts. Let's have a beer.

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In the above, you are defining liberty as "That which the government does not directly take from you", which is begging the question. You are defining your argument into being correct. However, liberty can be taken by anyone. If a corporation poisons the local air and I get cancer and die forty years later, they have robbed me of my liberty, no government required. If my choices are do what my boss says or I won't have the money to feed my children, and he demands to do my wife or I get fired, our liberty has most certainly been violated. Again, no government required. In fact, if the government prevents both of those things, the government has ENHANCED my liberty, through regulation.

[Elegiac]

Institutions are made up of people.

Fairly irrelevant. The nature of particular institutions is more than capable of counterbalancing the flaws in human nature; unless you're implying that constitutional monarchy is exactly the same as tsarist autocracy simply because 'governments are made of people'.

The individual character of rulers is far less relevant in our day and age simply by virtue of the existence of the civil service.

[Witchblade77]

you have to be 21 to buy a gun (which is amusing as you have to be 18 to join the army, where you get to use one, but nonetheless) and if you are only couple of years apart, you are not going to go to jail for having consensual sex, as there are provisions in laws for that. not in every jurisdiction, but in many. not to mention age of consent varies from state to stay and in roughly half the states - its 16 years of age - same age as being able to get a driver's license.

as to where US prudishness comes from? puritans settled here. traditions can be hard to shake.

[darxide]

Just out of curiosity, can someone explain the thought behind the way Americans go about sex, especially in relation to being "open" about it and regulations?

The religious right wing, that's where. Thankfully they are a shrinking majority.

[NineSpine]

Fairly irrelevant. The nature of particular institutions is more than capable of counterbalancing the flaws in human nature; unless you're implying that constitutional monarchy is exactly the same as tsarist autocracy simply because 'governments are made of people'.

The individual character of rulers is far less relevant in our day and age simply by virtue of the existence of the civil service.

Exactly, and that is why I don't see how a benevolent monarch is terrible useful unless he only rules over enough people to personally manage himself. At some point, he needs more benevolent people and more benevolent people and more benevolent people to manage the lower levels of government.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

I don't see how the awfulness of the Soviet Union makes our terrible decisions into good decisions. Most of the proxy wars we engaged in in the Cold War had no effect on the outcome. We LOST the Vietnam war, and the Soviet Union was powerless by the time we started endlessly engaging in South American coups. Iran wasn't even run by communists. Your argument makes no sense. The Soviet Union imploded on its own, and the US had little to do with it in terms of proxy wars. This isn't even debated anymore in the modern historiography, because it is long settled.

The funny part is that you think I love the Soviet Union, but YOU are the one attributing to them this almost supernatural power over the world stage, and the ability to somehow force the US to make god awful decisions for half a century. The Soviet Union was never that powerful. Its capabilities were always overstated, and its system never worked. YOU have the high opinion of them, not me.

I should not have assumed you were a soviet fanboy(as many on this forum are), but I mainly brought them up as an example that the world would not all of the sudden be unicorns and roses if the US suddenly started ignoring it. The world is violent and unstable weather or not we are participating in it. It is unfair to characterize the violence and instability as resulting solely from our actions. Intelligent debates can be had about whether or not our actions were effective or even in our own interests. That debate cannot happen however so long as we put them in the context of the us being this uniquely evil hegemony bent on world domination. We were and are a nation state attempting to us its power and resources to maximize our ability to acquire more power and resources, just like everybody else.

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Fairly irrelevant. The nature of particular institutions is more than capable of counterbalancing the flaws in human nature; unless you're implying that constitutional monarchy is exactly the same as tsarist autocracy simply because 'governments are made of people'.

The individual character of rulers is far less relevant in our day and age simply by virtue of the existence of the civil service.

You are correct, the nature of institutions can counterbalance human nature, at least somewhat. A large enough collection of assholes, united in purpose, can corrupt any institution, but I digress. The nature of how quickly an institution can be corrupted is determined by how widely that institution distributes power. The whole argument we've been having is that you believe power should be consolidated and liberty curtailed to create a more egalitarian society. I've been arguing that power should be distributed as widely as possible and individual liberty be maximized to create a society where prosperity is achieved on the basis of individual merit.

[Elegiac]

You are correct, the nature of institutions can counterbalance human nature, at least somewhat. A large enough collection of assholes, united in purpose, can corrupt any institution, but I digress. The nature of how quickly an institution can be corrupted is determined by how widely that institution distributes power. The whole argument we've been having is that you believe power should be consolidated and liberty curtailed to create a more egalitarian society. I've been arguing that power should be distributed as widely as possible and individual liberty be maximized to create a society where prosperity is achieved on the basis of individual merit.

Which has historically never been the case and can be safely dismissed as an argument.

[NineSpine]

I should not have assumed you were a soviet fanboy(as many on this forum are), but I mainly brought them up as an example that the world would not all of the sudden be unicorns and roses if the US suddenly started ignoring it. The world is violent and unstable weather or not we are participating in it. It is unfair to characterize the violence and instability as resulting solely from our actions. Intelligent debates can be had about whether or not our actions were effective or even in our own interests. That debate cannot happen however so long as we put them in the context of the us being this uniquely evil hegemony bent on world domination. We were and are a nation state attempting to us its power and resources to maximize our ability to acquire more power and resources, just like everybody else.

It isn't about world domination, but it is about hegemony, and in many cases it is about securing power and profits for multinational corporations in ways that have no benefit for the US as a nation. Nobody is saying that without the US everything is going to be great, but the US has done little to make the world a generally better place since WWII. There is a great argument that our failures have been misguided, not malicious, but that doesn't make them not failures, and it doesn't make the impact positive.

If you came from a nation that the US has utterly decimated, if your family was raped and killed by a contra death squad in Nicaragua, your opinion might be a little harsher towards the US. It's only from the relative safety of the US, or the developed world in general, that we can so easily wave off the death and destruction that we have brought people. If your village was destroyed and your mother raped and your brother killed, by US backed forces, these arguments about the grand scheme of things isnt just uncompelling, but also wildly condescending and dismissive.

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I should not have assumed you were a soviet fanboy(as many on this forum are), but I mainly brought them up as an example that the world would not all of the sudden be unicorns and roses if the US suddenly started ignoring it. The world is violent and unstable weather or not we are participating in it. It is unfair to characterize the violence and instability as resulting solely from our actions. Intelligent debates can be had about whether or not our actions were effective or even in our own interests. That debate cannot happen however so long as we put them in the context of the us being this uniquely evil hegemony bent on world domination. We were and are a nation state attempting to us its power and resources to maximize our ability to acquire more power and resources, just like everybody else.

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You are correct, the nature of institutions can counterbalance human nature, at least somewhat. A large enough collection of assholes, united in purpose, can corrupt any institution, but I digress. The nature of how quickly an institution can be corrupted is determined by how widely that institution distributes power. The whole argument we've been having is that you believe power should be consolidated and liberty curtailed to create a more egalitarian society. I've been arguing that power should be distributed as widely as possible and individual liberty be maximized to create a society where prosperity is achieved on the basis of individual merit.

But the capitalist system, at least as practiced in the US and some other countries, doesn't prevent consolidation of power. In fact, it does the complete opposite. Government is the only check on accumulation of economic power in capitalism, and the accumulation is exponential. It eventually breaks the system itself.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

In the above, you are defining liberty as "That which the government does not directly take from you", which is begging the question. You are defining your argument into being correct. However, liberty can be taken by anyone. If a corporation poisons the local air and I get cancer and die forty years later, they have robbed me of my liberty, no government required. If my choices are do what my boss says or I won't have the money to feed my children, and he demands to do my wife or I get fired, our liberty has most certainly been violated. Again, no government required. In fact, if the government prevents both of those things, the government has ENHANCED my liberty, through regulation.

Which is why we have government, and regulations, which are good things. However, if the same government, with the same regulatory power says I must pay union dues to work in a particular job despite not agreeing with how the union spends that money, or a government confiscates a farm that has been in my family for generations because the runoff is upstream of a biologically insignificant tadpole, the government has taken my liberty. Wanting a smaller government and less regulation is not the same as wanting no government and no regulation. We are debating the extent to which we want to embrace one or the other, not their complete absence.

[Elegiac]

Which is why we have government, and regulations, which are good things. However, if the same government, with the same regulatory power says I must pay union dues to work in a particular job despite not agreeing with how the union spends that money, or a government confiscates a farm that has been in my family for generations because the runoff is upstream of a biologically insignificant tadpole, the government has taken my liberty.

Not really, considering both said money and said land isn't actually your property.

[NineSpine]

Which is why we have government, and regulations, which are good things. However, if the same government, with the same regulatory power says I must pay union dues to work in a particular job despite not agreeing with how the union spends that money, or a government confiscates a farm that has been in my family for generations because the runoff is upstream of a biologically insignificant tadpole, the government has taken my liberty. Wanting a smaller government and less regulation is not the same as wanting no government and no regulation. We are debating the extent to which we want to embrace one or the other, not their complete absence.

But we aren't arguing that regulation for the sake of regulation is good, while you do seem to be arguing that less government for the sake of less government is good. That's a big distinction. If you do not adopt that stance, then we are left simply debating the merits of individual policies, and the fact is that when you start weighing policies solely by their net benefit, you end up with overwhelmingly liberal policies. Conservative policies only hold up as long as you start with the accepted belief that less government for the sake of less government is good. They do not hold up to the standard of "What is best for society?"