Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "PragerU"
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp "Fascism and Socialism are two completely opposed ideologies."
They are two different flavors of socialism that vilify each other and pretend to constitute the political spectrum. Each tells the lie "If you're not one of us, you're one of them." All sane and decent folk are neither.
"The first uses a capitalist economic basis"
"Capitalism" is Marx's caricature of free market economics. Fascism is not free market economics.
"This is completely opposed to socialism in which the economic model is that of commonly owned means of production. There is no person making profits that is above the rest, or cutting costs by firing employees and leaving them to starve on the side of the road."
The whole economic system is run for the benefit and enrichment of the Nomenclatura. When you say "That's not real Communism", what you mean is it's not theoretical communism, a utopia that has never and can never exist.
"I think we should start with the basic definition of socialism."
The only practical definition (definition of a thing that has existed and can exist) of socialism is central control of the economy. "Common ownership" is invariably a window dressing for despotism. In fact, and historically in practice, despotism results, and the reason why IS AN INHERENT FLAW OF THE THEORY. You seek to replace the free market with an arbitrary distribution of stuff. To do this you need an arbiter. The arbiter does not BECOME, he IS by nature of his function, the dictator. In fact, this is recognized in the theory, "the dictatorship of the proletariat". You, first, remove all the protections, restraints, checks and balances of the civic society, (often accompanied by the removal of checks on the conscience from religion,) give absolute power (in a sense greater even than the kings and emperors of old) to a person or a group, already acclimated to a free hand in the use of force when they steal everybody's stuff. Then you wonder why so many get murdered by your just and equitable and scientific government, and why life in your utopia is so similar to slavery.
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, and that the problems of the human condition are the result of some social construct, because we don't want to face the truth about ourselves. To the communist free markets; to the anarchist government; to the New Atheists religion, to primitivists agriculture or technology, to racists whites or blacks or Jews or whoever; is the root of all evil. The clear, harsh, intolerable, and absolutely vital and central essence of human nature is that WE ARE OUR PROBLEM, not any externality or construct. As the song says, "You can run from yourself, but you won't get far. 'Cause wherever you go --- There you are." This is the starting point of clarity in history, sociology, and psychiatry; every study which pertains to the nature of humanity. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
Socialism IS despotism, inherently, invariably, and unavoidably.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp
All Fascists and Nazis are Leftists. Mussolini was an editor of a leftist paper. Prior to the war Mussolini and FDR, the progressive (which at the time meant socialism plus eugenics plus Jim Crow laws) were exchanging political love letters praising one another and also in the American and Italian press.
Mussolini and his party developed Fascism because Marx's predicted proletarian uprising, long overdue by Communist prediction, never happened. Mussolini noted that despite ideology, people still fought for their country, so he added ardent nationalism to socialism. Unlike the Nazis, there was nothing acutely racial about Mussolini's nationalism (he was not anti-semitic, for example). When he took power he got a congratulatory telegram from Lenin for being a leftist leader who took control of Italy.
Hitler made no bones about being a leftist:
#1. “I have learned a great deal from Marxism” … “as I do not hesitate to admit”
#2. [My task is to] “convert the German volk (people) to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists”
#3. “If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites – and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose.” “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?”
#4. We must “find and travel the road from individualism to socialism without revolution”.
#5. “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
#6. “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions” 1927
#7. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve.”
Select planks from the Nazi party platform:
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
/ end citation
The early (pre-Holocaust) laws relegating Jews to second-class citizens were copied wholesale from the "Progressive" Jim Crow laws of the American South.
Stalin not only entered into a non-aggression pact with Hitler, he joined him in the conquest of Poland and gave him material and propaganda support until Hitler betrayed him with Operation Barbarossa. Stalin considered the liberal west the greater threat ideologically.
At the time, everybody considered Fascism and Nazism to be part of the left. After the war, when the Nazis had made eugenics unfashionable, the left exerted its propaganda power to attribute Fascism and Nazism to the right. The notion that Fascism is not leftist is historical revisionism.
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There is nothing about physics plus matter that predicts or allows for consciousness. The notion that consciousness arises from matter and physics is not a simple error, like 2+2=5, but a category error, like 2+2=blue. The notion that it does is a scientistic superstition, an urban legend.
One can not rule out reductionist intelligence. The Artificial Intelligence field is an attempt to achieve just that, an attempt which has made practical progress, but not with the speed or ease that the pioneers confidently predicted.
Can't there be a rule that a certain level of intelligence is always conscious?
If there were it could not, by definition, be a rule of physics, thus it would contradict materialism.
Since we know that there is something beyond physics, particularly conscience, in other words, ourselves;
there is no rational basis to reject free will.
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Mr. Waters can, of course, brazen it out, "You can't prove 2+2 does not equal blue." I wonder if that sort of thing would have impressed his grade school teacher.?
But as an argument against free will, it won't do. You must prove your sum. Until you have some notion of how consciousness arises from matter and physics, the notion that it does is a mere superstition. And the argument from reductionism to no free will depends on reductionism being true.
My second statement of my argument was not a new argument, as I made clear. I still don't understand what you thought I meant the first time and I suspect that is why I can't make heads or tails of your first response. The only thing that is clear is that the argument you first responded to is not the argument I made. Reading your first response is like listening to one half of a telephone conversation. Perhaps if you want your original response, of which you seem to be proud, to impress, you should summarize, in your own words, the argument to which you thought you were responding.
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John Waters asserts:
"2+2 = blue" is nothing but a straw man.
It was not an argument, it was an explanatory analogy. By taking the same principle out of the realm dominated by pop scientism and wishful thinking, I hope to engender impartial thinking about the principle, which once accepted may be profitably applied to the subject at hand. So much nonsense has been disseminated about this in the general culture that this is necessary.
"If by "consciousness" you mean something other than the interactions of
our brains, then the burden of proof of its existence is on you."
My argument only has force for those who believe that consciousness exists. To those who claim to have an open mind on the matter, my argument has nothing to say. If you mean by "the interactions of our brains" materialism, then you have not answered my objection. If you mean something else, you have not even contradicted my conclusion.
Something cannot be it's own cause.
So far, so good.
In order for my mental processes to be determined by my mental processes.
Whoa, nobody claimed that.
Try, "Our mental processes are our mental processes." There is no a priori reason to attribute their cause to a hypothetical something else. Indeed, unless that something else is also mind or reason, doing so invalidates reason itself. We accept reasoned thought and reject caused thought. We don't put tightly reasoned mathematical theorems on a par with mental notions resulting from a splinter pressing on the brain. The distinction is precisely that the first notion is reasoned, and the second is caused by irrational forces. We ordinarily allow no exception to this principle, yet those who claim that all thought is caused by irrational forces ask us to make the unacceptable exception the rule.
Ah, Occam's razor. The simplest explanation. Except, you have not provided an explanation, simple or complex. You are holding the razor by the blade. You mention burden of proof, as if we were positing some supernatural explanation of a phenomenon. We arrived at the notion of free will, not by speculation or philosophizing, but by freely choosing. Our notions of justice and responsibility are built on it. Every time you make a moral judgement that judgement is predicated upon the notion of both free will and an objective standard of right and wrong by which are choices are to be judged. And except for psychopaths, none of us can go a week without making moral judgements. And a world view which cannot be lived does not have to be taken seriously. The only notions we have asked you to prove are the notions you use as assumptions to disprove free will.
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John Waters says:
"It's just a straw man - a completely analogy if you wish."
Did you mean "completely an analogy" or " a complete analogy"
"a specific type of consciousness"
I never said that. Dawkins tries to explain consciousness as an epiphenomenon of material processes. Set aside proving it for the moment, to even make an epiphenomenal claim plausible you must give a hint as to how the epiphenomenon reduces to the presumed substrate, or at a minimum, how they might both reduce to the same category. Without such, the claim is meaningless, and does not rise to the level of error. Before you call this a revised argument it is the same argument. My original argument. If this is not clear I can amplify it.
(Thoughts)..." have not always existed (since not even I have always existed) therefore they must have causes (that must actually be external), which makes your claim completely false. "
I should have said "There is no a priori reason to attribute their cause to a specific something else". In other words your attribution of a thoughts cause to itself, or to another thought, is not the only alternative to attributing them to material causes. Many world views other than materialism have an internally consistent attributions for these causes. The one you attacked is held by no one. I can tell you what I, for example, believe about the matter if you like. But one does not need a specific example to know that the alternative you proposed is not the only alternative. That is obvious.
"The reason why we accept "reasoned thought and reject caused thought". is that it is consistent to some degree. A working calculator is consistent, therefore it is trusted. One that has shows incorrect results half the time is not."
Indeed the distinction may well be inductive, that is, we may have arrived at it by experience. That does not invalidate the distinction.
Occam's razor is "Entities are not to be multiplied needlessly. The simplest explanation is probably the best one." Google is our friend.
"My actions are weighted according to what is beneficial and to the understanding that other people are not so different from me or from each other. "?
Your are staking a claim to act on good morals, not stating a basis for morality. In order to reason to moral conclusions, you must start with moral premises. Logically, there is no way to reason from premises in the indicative mood to conclusions in the imperative mood. There is no way to get from an "is" to an "ought".
"'the notions you use as assumptions to disprove free will.'
Those assumptions have been the ones assumed in the video (because that was what I was commenting about and disproving)."
The video did not assume the truth of naturalism.
The point of my last paragraph was that your invocation of "burden of proof" was an unfortunate one because the position you are arguing against is the common sense or default one, despite a great deal of propaganda and cultural conditioning to the contrary.
About "baseless". Logic demands premises to reach conclusions. Premises are baseless. One can nevertheless use logic to reject premises, or combinations of premises, or invalid deductions, which are inconsistent, for example: You say "you cannot show how free will fits into materialism, therefore free will does not exist." Then you say "I cannot show how consciousness fits into materialism, but it fits anyway."
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replying to +John Waters:
Invoking "burden of proof" in an academic discussion or debate, where there are no immediate consequences of the outcome independent of that outcome, is to simply beg to be allowed to assume that which should be proven. "The house wins all ties," but who died and made you the house? You can, and probably will, continue to insist that I shoulder the "burden of proof", but unless you give me a logical reason why I should spot you ties, I will continue to ignore it.
You said
"Internally consistent, as the assertion that "I can fly, therefore I can fly" is internally consistent yet completely unsubstantiated..."
As? What is the similarity? I was not claiming that internal consistency proves a notion, I was noting that there were alternatives to your straw man carefully chosen for inconsistency, namely thoughts causing themselves.
"You can either claim that occam's razor only applies to explanations, and therefore my principle is not occam's razor OR you can say that the principle I used is not occam's razor."
2 posts prior you said:
"I need only to accept the most likely explanation based on the facts and the implications of those facts."
YOU stated your principle as applying to explanations.
I said,
"In order to reason to moral conclusions, you must start with moral premises."
You said,
"Not really." Yes, really. That premises in the indicative mood do not lead to conclusions in the imperative mood is a principle of formal logic "Logic is our friend."
"I just need a mutually shared goal with other people in a community."
Self interest, even enlightened self interest, is not morality. Morality begins where self interest ends. Morality is sacrificing your interest for the good of another who objectively (on moral premises) has a better claim.
"Your claim simply demonstrates that your morals are baseless."
My claim is that morality requires a base. Your assumptions lead to the conclusion that ALL MORALS are baseless. If what I call my moral notions are simply the manipulation of "selfish genes", then they can no more logically command my loyalty than any other genetic trait, like the color of my eyes.
" ' "I cannot show how consciousness fits into materialism, but it fits anyway." '
On a side note: it does not fit at all."
"Side note"? Good grief! If you mean that consciousness does not fit into materialism, you are CONCEDING THE MAIN POINT OF MY MAIN ARGUMENT! If you stipulate that consciousness does not fit into materialism, do you hold that consciousness does not exist, or concede that materialism is false?
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Not one of the things you attribute to the West started with the west (the Holocaust was an act of a regime rebelling against the foundational values of the west); and compassion and wisdom, joy and happiness didn't start with India.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp
"A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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@IndigoShade "Known" by whom? Here is the Nazi party platform:
/Quote:
The Program of the German Workers’ Party is a program for our time.
The leadership rejects the establishment of new aims after those set out in the Program have been achieved, for the sole purpose of making it possible for the Party to continue to exist as the result of the artificially stimulated dissatisfaction of the masses.
1. We demand the uniting of all Germans within one Greater Germany, on the basis of the right to self-determination of nations.
2. We demand equal rights for the German people (Volk) with respect to other nations, and the annulment of the peace treaty of Versailles and St. Germain.
3. We demand land and soil (Colonies) to feed our People and settle our excess population.
4. Only Nationals (Volksgenossen) can be Citizens of the State. Only persons of German blood can be Nationals, regardless of religious affiliation. No Jew can therefore be a German National.
5. Any person who is not a Citizen will be able to live in Germany only as a guest and must be subject to legislation for Aliens.
6. Only a Citizen is entitled to decide the leadership and laws of the State. We therefore demand that only Citizens may hold public office, regardless of whether it is a national, state or local office.
We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of making party considerations, and not character and ability, the criterion for appointments to official positions.
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich without delay.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
19. We demand the replacement of Roman Law, which serves a materialistic World Order, by German Law.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
22. We demand the abolition of hireling troops and the creation of a national army.
23. We demand laws to fight against deliberate political lies and their dissemination by the press. In order to make it possible to create a German press, we demand:
a) all editors and editorial employees of newspapers appearing in the German language must be German by race;
b) non-German newspapers require express permission from the State for their publication. They may not be printed in the German language;
c) any financial participation in a German newspaper or influence on such a paper is to be forbidden by law to non-Germans and the penalty for any breach of this law will be the closing of the newspaper in question, as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-Germans involved.
Newspapers which violate the public interest are to be banned. We demand laws against trends in art and literature which have a destructive effect on our national life, and the suppression of performances that offend against the above requirements.
24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations, provided that they do not endanger the existence of the State or offend the concepts of decency and morality of the Germanic race.
The Party as such stands for positive Christianity, without associating itself with any particular denomination. It fights against the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent revival of our nation can be achieved only from within, on the basis of: Public Interest before Private Interest.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
The Party leadership promises to take an uncompromising stand, at the cost of their own lives if need be, on the enforcement of the above points.
Munich, Germany
February 24, 1920.
//END QUOTE
Replace every instance of "Jew" with "Wall Street bankers" and you have the new radical Democrat party platform. No "free market" planks here.
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