As I said:  take some "graduate level" courses in philosophy  I assumed that you already had under-graduate experience based on your vocabulary.  You'll find graduate work much different.

And no, I didn't think you were 18; more like 21-23 is my guess.
BTW, since I have NO desire for a long, meandering debate with you (given your history in this thread), let me close with but one example:

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Arbitrary:  1: depending on individual discretion (as of a judge) and not fixed by law.

OR another definition-
"based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something."


So statements like "Human laws are entirely arbitrary but there is a method of progression that establishes them" are borderline gibberish. I'm sure you know what you mean to say, but others do not because of this kind of word choice.

You are saying:
"Human laws are entirely "not fixed by law" and while they follow a standard "method of progression" they are, in fact, not determined by necessity or any intrinsic nature."

How does that argument strike you?  
Whether or not you are right about your views, you need to make your points more clearly (and less contradictory).

And when others disagree with you, it may not be because they don't understand something that you do.  Maybe you don't understand something they do.  Like, economics or constitutional law.

But what do I know?  What does others know?
No one knows more than you about these things, right?
Not even those stupid old supreme court justices.

Anyway... Rail on, young man!
Nietzsche

RE: "Rights -> Ethics -> Morals -> Laws"


lol

yeah, good luck with that!

If you get a chance, take some graduate level courses in philosophy.
I think it will change your views a lot!   
Beware of relying on your own readings and introductory/survey courses.
I spent at least 2 years un-learning a lot of the garbage I thought I knew before I got my philosophy degree.  I was both irritated by that, and delighted to make progress.  BTW, I would never throw around these claims the way you do.  It's nice to be young isn't it?

Cheers,
Nietzsche

Repeating the same statement over and over again does not make it true. You already made clear that in a democracy the constitution equals the social contract. Then you made clear that in a dictatorship the dictator gives rights arbitrarily to his/her citizens. So for this we don't need a social contract either. The conclusion is that it is a meaningless notion, like so many meta-physics. Btw the laws do not belong to metaphysics - one can empirical prove they exist.
You put it right. I prefer to ignore the idea of a social contract, because it has no practical meaning (you may think you have explained it, but you haven't) and does not help me to understand the world I live in. So I don't know if and when I violate the social contract. I do know if and when I violate some law and that I will get punished for it.
For your information: in physics a model means a theory that describes some phenomena and can be falsified. The idea of a social contract clearly isn't. But then again - you never needed empirical evidence, did you? Do you only accept it when it suits you? If yes, any debate with you gets nowhere and I indeed suspect Markovich recognized this quicker than I.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/08/08 at 17:38:43:


You still haven't explained what - for a democracy - is the difference between a social contract and a constitution, so this statement is premature. You haven't given one example of a social contract that isn't a constitution.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/08/08 at 17:38:43:


Strange. I always thought my human rights were guaranteed in the Dutch respectively the Surinamese constitution. I also always have thought that in dictatorships the average citizen had no human rights at all, being at the mercy of the arbitrariness of the actual power, that does not bother either about a social contract or its regulations. That's probably why you failed to answer my question about Louis XIV to Hitler. I could have added Pol Pot.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/08/08 at 17:38:43:


Nice, that's exactly one of the conditions I recognized for a working constitution in my previous post.

Now I am quite allergic to metaphysics, as it way too often leads to abstract bla bla without any relation to daily reality. The idea of the social contract is imo a fine example. As you have failed to explain the difference between a constitution and a social contract I must assume that you use the idea the same way Hobbes did: to justify a political system you like for one reason or another. Reject - in a philosophical way - the idea of the social contract and your justification becomes meaningless. Anyhow, I don't feel bound in any way by any social contract. As a result I feel free to pursue the change of the constitution of the country I live in in any way I prefer. I don't need metaphysics of any kind for this. Metaphysics never has brought any political change; building power has, so I concentrate on the latter.

Back to the origin of this. There are several arguments pro decentralization, ie transferring power from the Federal Government to the seperate states. There also arguments against it. These usually have to do with the scale of particular problems, that need a power of a similar scale.
The question what the ideal balance is has been actual in Europe last few years as well. Referring to a socalled social contract imo does not help answering it.

My conclusion is that the social contract is a meaningless idea I'd rather do about. Until you give the idea some practical meaning I stick to this.


Note: if I do have to accept some metaphysics, than it will be the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who has given (wo)man the human right to eat as much pasta asever (s)he likes. After all there is as much evidence for the FSM as for a Hobbesian convenant (his words) signing/constructing a social contract.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/07/08 at 23:14:00:


I'm afraid you're the one who misunderstands it. In fact in this explanation in a democracy a constitution equals a social contract, which makes the latter a superfluous notion. Why use two words for the same thing? If you think there is a difference between a social contract and a constitution, I would like you to explain it. I would also like you to explain what the social contract is in an absolute dictatorship, like those of Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte after 1806 and Adolf Hitler after July 1944. Until then I will understand the social contract in its original meaning.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/07/08 at 23:14:00:


I advise you to (re)read about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the inventor of the whole idea. Then I advise you to (re)read philosophical comments on it, because you write plain nonsense here. Nobody of my ancestors have signed a social contract (in the meaning JJR gave to it, as yours is quite unclear); and if they had there is no reason I should feel committed to it. And this is true for any civilian at any time. Therefor no social contract has any legal ground; hence it is a philosophical falsification (by JJR). I also would like to point out that philosophers like Macchiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel and Nietzsche never have accepted it.
There are two practical justifications for any constitution. The first one is that it works, so the civilians have faith in it. As I wrote before, the English have done quite well without one. Consequently the idea of a social contract never has been popular in the UK. The second one is that the government (especially dictatorships) is capable of enforcing it with violence. If these two conditions fail, no constitution works, so end of the social contract. See Somalia. All the talk about social contract is baked air. And according to William Ockham we then should get rid of it.

On Gettysburg: if the Federates had lost it, they still would have had enough economical and demographic sources to continue the war. The next battle (or the next after) would have been the turning point. Sacking one major city is usually not enough to win a war. I would like to know what was wrong with Lincoln's grand-strategy to deny the Confederates every thinkable ally.

Two other questions, back on-topic: according to you burocracy always is bad and inefficient. How come you are part of the biggest ie according to you worst and most inefficient burocracy mankind ever created, namely the American Army? The other one is, how come that you call yourself a Libertarian and not only accept but even recommends a structure in which blindly following orders is the highest virtue? It's this kind of contradiction that has put me off most from trains of thoughts like yours.
Oh, don't give me the answer that a rigid command structure is mandatory for any army. The Finnish have proven the opposite.

Historical correction: it was not Rousseau who invented the social contract, even though he wrote an entire book on the subject, but Hobbes. Their logic, beginning with the state of nature (which is also a philosophical falsification), is the same though.

Markovich wrote on 11/07/08 at 21:05:39:


It has a history that I'm keenly aware of, and I'm also fully aware that many justices (Earl Warren chiefly) had a blatant disregard for it.

Lincoln was a horrible president from the stand-point of the Constitution.

Are you really going to sit here and pretend suspending habeus corpus is a good thing? Seriously? 

You're going to pretend that attacking the states that had a Constitutional right to leave the Union is a good thing? Seriously?

You're probably one of those people that think Lincoln was a great president just because he freed the slaves. Wow, what an accomplishment considering it was aimed chiefly at hurting the South's economy during war, and discouraging foreign involvement. It was hardly for moral reasons.

By the way, lay off the red herrings, there's so many of them I'm starting to think you have ADD. Focus.

Quote:


Says the guy that said he was done with this earlier.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/07/08 at 16:43:36:

But this is something I do know something about. This conclusion is highly debatable. While I don't deny the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg as a turning point, one may argue that the Confederal case was lost anyway. The Federates had blockaded all Southern harbours; the abolition of slavery had stopped all European support for the Confederates (and this was Lincoln's first and last motive); the Confederates were split up in two thanks to the Federal control of the Mississippi river, so one might say that the Confederates were already strategical lost anyway.
I find subjects like these highly interesting, but they are way off-topic. Lincoln may have made political mistakes, but there was nothing wrong with his strategy and grand-strategy around 1863.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/07/08 at 15:17:50:


OK, as I have never read the American Constitution, don't know enough about the way American burocracy works and you have here limited yourself to the USA I can only stay out of this debate.

Still I repeat that The Netherlands, Scandinavia and several other countries in Europe - and I probably may have mentioned Singapore too - have been free from corrupt burocracy for a long time, so you don't have empirical confirmation, something you still seem to pretend.

BPaulsen wrote on 11/07/08 at 15:17:50:


My friend, that quote is a Dutch comment on Dutch politics. Who are you to judge what is false and misleading in The Netherlands? You must have misunderstood this - for one thing The Netherlands don't have a president, but a queen and a prime-minister. And it's very true that the Dutch electorate would not like to see a military man in charge. You may think that Quote:
, the Dutch generally don't. Still the country hasn't done worse generally than the USA since 1945, don't you think?

Btw, I think the social contract a philosophical falsification. The only thing that matters is: does a constitution work or not? What's more, the UK has never had a constitution and still hasn't fallen apart. So beware when deriving arguments from the social contract idea.