I voted Biden mainly as a protest vote to get dumper-trumper out of there (much like many moderate repubs did viz. Hilary). To this end, apparently there are a lot of moderate Republicans supporting the Biden ticket wanting to get back to certain GOP ideals like fiscal restraint and character/leadership/non-racist/non-mysogynist, more honestly, no cheating, flip flops on policy, etc.etc . kinds of ideology.

And/or you can look at it like the lesser of two evils.

The experiment didn't work. When you look at the track record, he's just part of the swamp.

I worry that he's going to run country into the ground with debt similar to his casino's and the university that went bust.... I think he said he was the king of debt during the 2016 campaign. Certainly not a traditional GOP ideal.

he's just part of the swamp. — 3017amen

You sound like a cuck but it's true, Hillary and dozens of politicians didn't serve jail-time, no tangible illegal immigration restrictions, NAFTA replaced by worse UMSCA, war in the middle east continues, more hyphenated-American politics, and forced vaccine.
The only thing of value he did was building half the wall. That, and he managed to removed the worst aspects of Obamacare such as the required insurance.

and forced vaccine. — Ergosum

What's wrong with that? The Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that states have the authority to enforce compulsory vaccination laws.

The Court held that "in every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand" and that "[r]eal liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others."

As long as, by accepting that the government can, legally, force a vaccine into you, you no longer live in a free society, then I guess that's that. The state could always do whatever it wanted to citizens, but end the "free country" bit and pursue a "greater good" theme. Accuracy matters.

As long as, by accepting that the government can, legally, force a vaccine into you, you no longer live in a free society, then I guess that's that. — Book273

"[r]eal liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others."

A free society always has some restrictions and some unavoidable duties. "Complete" freedom is impossible.

...the government can, legally, force a vaccine into you...

I don't think it's the case that they can force a vaccine, it's just that they can punish you for not accepting a vaccine (fines, imprisonment, loss of certain privileges, etc.). For example Jacobson v. Massachusetts was a case where a man was fined for not accepting a vaccine, and immunization of children is mandatory to enroll in public school (with some exceptions).

I work in acute psychiatry. We force needles and medications into people fairly regularly. Hold them down, poke and inject. We are already doing it to violent patients, so doing it with a vaccine isn't exactly a huge leap.

A free society always has some restrictions and some unavoidable duties. — Michael

Ergo: Not a free society.

Just own it.

For example my home runs as a benevolent dictatorship. There is nothing democratic about it. I make the rules, people can make requests, or state their position, but ultimately, everything is on me anyway so I make the final call. Freedoms in this dictatorship have been awarded by me and are based on meeting expectations. If expectations are not met, freedoms are removed. I have no illusions about it, neither does my family. However none of us are delusional enough to say the house runs via democratic process.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but by your definition of "free society" am I free to kill someone I don't like?

Ergo: Not a free society.

Just own it. — Book273

What do you understand a free society to be? Anyone can do anything they like? That sounds an awful lot like anarchy, which is inevitably self-defeating as people will either band together for protection, following some set of agreed upon rules, or be oppressed by those who do.

Because you shouldn't trust that Bill Gates creep. He's pro population reduction and you don't know what he might stick in that vaccine to get his way. The big thing is that this vaccine is going going to be taken by the whole world so they don't have any reason to hold back. I remember as well the H1N1 vaccine was causing people to get the flu.
This whole corona thing is just a bunch of bullshit anyway, with the average dying age older than life expectancy. Also when someone dies and they tested positive for corona, it's automatically labelled a COVID death. The grand stupidity of so many world leaders in their response is mind-boggling.

Why 'waste my vote' on Biden when he cannot win my resident state (Georgia)? — 180 Proof

:wink:

Because you shouldn't trust that Bill Gates creep. He's pro population reduction and you don't know what he might stick in that vaccine to get his way. — Ergosum

You think he's mixing it in his basement lab or something? At night?

(play theme from The Twilight Zone here)

And suddenly, things felt different Tuesday. It was that cowardly GSA woman finally throwing in the towel. It was Laura Ingraham admitting it was over the night before. It was Donald Trump pardoning the turkeys, a self-abasing ritual for a president in the best of circumstances, but these were the worst of circumstances, and it was actually the first time in his presidency that I felt any empathy for him as I sat there imagining for, oh, at least 1.3 seconds what it must have taken for him to haul his lazy septuagenarian girth out there to do that.

But more than any of those images, it was the sight of Joe Biden and his new national security team standing up there and introducing themselves to America. Serious people. Public servants, who are in this for the right reasons. Not a grifter or goner in the bunch. People who are qualified for the jobs to which they’re nominated, and people who will be given rein to do those jobs without having to worry that the president is going to tweet at 5:37 a.m. that he’s been rethinking things and maybe it’s time to sell Alaska after all. — Michael Tomasky

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-biden-era-is-really-here-and-it-feels-like-a-miracle

Why 'waste my vote' on Biden when he cannot win my resident state (Georgia)?
— 180 Proof

:wink: — creativesoul

:sweat:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/422491 :victory: :mask:

:clap:

Great work down there!!!

Society has rules, I get that. My opinion of these rules is irrelevant. The issue that I take is with the description "free", it is on par with the annoyance I have with the description of "voluntary" traffic fines. Neither appellation is accurate. Society has rules, therefore is not free. Anarchy is free, might not be what most people want, but the description is accurate. And yes, in a free society, you could kill someone you don't like, and someone could then exact revenge upon you, etc. Since we have rules to prevent that...Not Free. Just saying.

If I elect to not pay my "voluntary" fine I will lose my license and eventually end up in jail. Again, not voluntary, as refusing results in punitive measures. So not voluntary. If this version of voluntary can not be used universally without resulting in jail time it is not actually voluntary.

I support accurate word use. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

A freethinking, (economic democracy) left-libertarian interlude:

"Free" of - freedom from -

• ethical responsibility or
• legal accountability or
• evidence-based (more-than-subjective, material (facticity) conditioned) understanding

is not liberty, civil or political. :mask:

By "free society" I understand 'an open, inclusive, tolerant (except of intolerance!), rules-bound, or non-arbitrary, diachronic network of stakeholder-governed social (i.e. institutional) arrangements; in other words, a political-economy which presupposes, and is sustained by, active, vigilant exercises of liberty in the defense of liberty.' Thus, I agree, America is not a "free society" for most of its citizens, in most ways, most of the time; that's because, since the founding of this republic as a compromised slave state (which, through two and a half centuries, has morphed into an apartheid state, then national security military-industrial state, then into the paramilitarized police prison & pharma-industrial state we are today), America has only ever been a plutocratic free-rider state (re: e.g. the US Electoral College system & US Senate ... or effectively tax-free/exempt corporate welfare recipients). On the verge of sliding into oligarchic populism, as indicated by +73 million votes cast in the last election to reelect tr45h, this country is still (barely) "free enough" to Resist ... though maybe not for much longer than the next (couple?) election cycles.

Resistance to il-liberality, (sketched aboved), is what 'American liberty' looks like today, in this moment of existential threat to liberty and its prospects. Not yet "free" but we're free enough for the time being to struggle on and strive for a freer society. The facilely cynical alternative (suggested by e.g. @Book273 et al) will only accelerate our civic self-defeat and social collapse into something like a "Mad Max" version of 'the Hobbesian state-of-nature' in which "freedom" (freeDUMB) amounts to nothing but

... continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, XIII

Refusal, during a fucking global pandemic, to wear a mask, socially distance, etc is not substantively different from refusing to e.g. bathe or clean your clothes, wear a seatbelt, drive sober or with auto-insurance, stop @red traffic lights, use toilets, ... which is just being, in a word, an anti-social cunt.

Just to be clear - do you make any distinction between "free" vs "anarchy"? Or are those two words interchangeable?

It's quite simple. Don't tell me I am free to make my choices and then give me a list of things that are not allowed. Skip the bullshit and just tell me what is allowed. Be clear, be honest about it. If something is not permitted do not wait until someone has decided to do it and then say "no". Open with "not this". Clarity.

There are rules in games, which we follow, or we elect no to play. Once alive one is obligated to play, unless on elects to self remove, so we play by certain rules. Saying those rules do not exist is simply false. I am not saying right or wrong, just denying them is inaccurate.

Refusal, during a fucking global pandemic, to wear a mask, socially distance, etc is not substantively different from refusing to e.g. bathe or clean your clothes, wear a seatbelt, drive sober or with auto-insurance, stop red traffic lights, use toilets, ... which is just being an, in a word, anti-social cunt. — 180 Proof

Can't be said enough. And how about this for a public ad campaign?

"Don't be a cunt. Wear a mask."

It's that fucking simple, folks.

Explains a lot. The people of the Land of the free, don't know what freedom is.

Don't tell me . . . — Book273

I'm not telling you anything. I understand your definition of the word "free" - and I am not criticizing your definition. OK - at least not yet . . .

But I am not seeing any distinction between your use of the word "free" and how I would use the word "anarchist".

So I'll repeat my question - As you define the words - do you see a distinction between a "free society" vs "anarchist society"? If so, please elaborate.

Not really. But I am not saying I live in a "free society", It is however, the common rhetoric and is inaccurate, which is what I am saying, in a nutshell.

makes sense, since we are being asked to wear undies on our face...I see the connection.

Lol... Glad everything's coming together for you!

The question is why you'd think freedom, in a social sense, is the absence of rules. For one, the very nature of a rule is that it assumes you're free.

So next - would you personally prefer to live in a free / anarchic society OR would you prefer to live in a society which has clearly defined rules (and for the sake of this thought experiment you can choose the rules)

The issue that I take is with the description "free", — Book273

I submit you do not know what free means, having at best a schoolboy's "understanding." That is, as evidenced by your posts here, you have no idea. If you're interested in the topic, I refer you to Kant, but I doubt you're interested.

As it happens, living in a free society is free, rules and all. That you don't understand that is a failing of your education or you or both. The Kantian insight is that freedom is simply a person's having the ability to act in accordance with reason, so that each may do his or her duty. This freedom distinguished from license, which is what you're confusing with freedom. The corollary is that any act done under compulsion is not free.

any act done under compulsion is not free — tim wood

Agreed.

And how about this for a public ad campaign?

"Don't be a cunt. Wear a mask."

It's that fucking simple, folks. — Baden

The people of the Land of the Free, don't know what freedom is. — unenlightened

:mask: