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To: Okiegolddust; Architect; x
Okie: If liberty is really dependent on family, community and virtue, lose these things and we also lose all.

x: a subjective theory of value (worth) is not a subjective theory of values (ethics).

Putting liberty in the same list with positive values such as family, community and virtue, is an ontological error. Liberty is an infrastructure that enables values, just like the Internet is an infrastructure that enables creation of WWW content.

Thus the interdependence between the two is not symmetrical. Values depend on liberty because a coerced behavior that conforms with values possesses no values. Coerced family is no family; coerced virtue is no virtue. Liberty depends on values not ontologically but practically: if men have no virtue, they will gradually lose their liberty. But we can imagine (all too well) a free man without virtue. The opposite is not true: the only way to ascertain a slave's virtue is to see what he does when free.

30 posted on 02/07/2002 11:09:20 AM PST by annalex
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To: annalex
"Liberty is an infrastructure that enables values, just like the Internet is an infrastructure that enables creation of WWW content."

The opposite could also be said to be true: if you are not surrounded by primarily moral and ethical people what you are free to do, besides shooting back until you run out of ammo, is pretty limited.

"Coerced family is no family"

All families are coerced in the sense that they are determined by who had sex with whom and who was born as a result. People who recognize that they are "stuck" with their father, mother and siblings and behave morally and ethically with regard to them are freely choosing to do the right thing despite being presented with a fait acompli.

"the only way to ascertain a slave's virtue is to see what he does when free."

None of us are completely free, nor is anyone completely enslaved. Even a slave can refuse to follow orders. He may soon be hanged, but he can choose to resist nevertheless. Coalminers who had to work long hours in dangerous conditions could walk off the job any time, but they had few other opportunities that would guarantee food on the table for them and their families.

The reality is that we have to try and make the best choices we can given that we have been genetically created to prefer certain actions and things (regardless of their merit), conditioned by early childhood to prefer certain other actions and things (again, regardless of their merit), and we are currently surrounded by a sea of voices trying to get us to do still other things of questionable merit.

We are born stuck in a very sticky life and the more we thrash around in life, the more we get stuck. We are not individual atoms engaging in pure transactions with other individual atoms.

We learn from tradition that if we behave certain ways and limit ourselves to certain choices, we will have more choices in the future, e.g. if I don't become a drug addict I will tend to have more money with which to buy more useful stuff. So does the freedom proceed from adherence to good values, or do good values proceed from a free environment? I may agree with you that the relationship is not symmetric, but I don't think it is one of precedence either where freedom is given the greater precedence.

Besides if you've ever visited one of the Calvinist predestination threads, you might start doubting freedom exists at all! ;-)

40 posted on 02/11/2002 7:06:05 PM PST by who_would_fardels_bear
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