Nolan Chart Test

Liberty said:
The earliest form of socialism can be traced back to a couple of brothers in Rome sometime around 100BC.
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Socialism, as a movement, started emerging after the French revolution. You can say that other forms of government preceded socialism and looked vaguely like it (such as the Christian communes that I mentioned), but you can't say that socialism itself existed back then.

Liberty said:
The founders saw a difference between a democracy, and a constitutional republic. What if a majority voted to legislate everyone go to church every Sunday, or go to jail.
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Better than Nazi Germany. The average case of a direct democracy is better than the average case of many other forms of governments, because a democracy is generally going to be pretty stable (it allows revolutions to flow from the ballot box rather than the point of a gun), whereas the Soviets could only stay in power through ruthless oppression. Saying that it's the worst form of government imaginable is hyperbole at best.
 
Glorious Watermark XVII said:
Socialism, as a movement, started emerging after the French revolution. You can say that other forms of government preceded socialism and looked vaguely like it (such as the Christian communes that I mentioned), but you can't say that socialism itself existed back then.



Better than Nazi Germany. The average case of a direct democracy is better than the average case of many other forms of governments, because a democracy is generally going to be pretty stable (it allows revolutions to flow from the ballot box rather than the point of a gun), whereas the Soviets could only stay in power through ruthless oppression. Saying that it's the worst form of government imaginable is hyperbole at best.
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Try this:

Gracchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Gaius_Gracchus_Tribune_of_the_People.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Gaius_Gracchus_Tribune_of_the_People.jpg/200px-Gaius_Gracchus_Tribune_of_the_People.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/9/96/Gaius_Gracchus_Tribune_of_the_People.jpg/200px-Gaius_Gracchus_Tribune_of_the_People.jpg

The founders had a totally different take on democracy.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” —Ben Franklin

“Democracy ... wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
—John Adams

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
—Thomas Jefferson

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
James Madison

The quote "a democracy is the worst form of govt" came from one of the founders. I forget which one.

I think I would have to agree with the founders sense they are a lot more informed than you. Nothing personal.
 
Liberty said:
It's funny how socialist call themselves liberal, when they're nothing of the sort.
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I understand and have understood the point you are trying to make Liberty. I would really argue that it's the opposite - most socialists have really become social liberals, rather than vice versa. The goals and aims of the modern socialist movement can't be compared at all to the radical aims of their forefathers.
 
Liberty said:
The founders had a totally different take on democracy.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” —Ben Franklin
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Missattributed:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Misattributed

Liberty said:
“Democracy ... wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
—John Adams
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Sort of to be expected, since John Adams was one of the more aristocratic founders.

Liberty said:
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
—Thomas Jefferson
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Also misattributed:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#Misattributed

Actual quote first appeared in 1986, and is probably derived from:

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." - Alexis de Tocqueville

Liberty said:
Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
James Madison
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There were few serious democracies before the time of the founders. It was much more common for one dude to get really powerful, PWN everyone around him into submission, and then give the people and land he owned to his children as inheritance. Athens was sort of a democracy, and did last quite a while, but it was eventually conquered by a republic that had been usurped by a strong dictator. Whatever past democracies Madison is referring to in this statement, I don't know.

As it is, the truth proposition you have presented me with is pretty simple to defeat. All I have to do is to find a single form of government that has ever been worse than a democracy. And that's pretty easy.

Liberty said:
The quote "a democracy is the worst form of govt" came from one of the founders. I forget which one.

I think I would have to agree with the founders sense they are a lot more informed than you. Nothing personal.
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I am not even making a serious defense of democracy as the best possible form of government. I am just pointing out that your statement was hyperbole. These hand-picked quotes of founders are often much more nuanced when in context, and they were meant to be argued with, rather than forever toted around by loyal "supporters" like a bible and used as a bludgeon to automatically defeat all opposition.

I swear, I don't feel like I'm arguing with a human here.
 
Glorious Watermark XVII said:
Land reform is a pretty common theme in history. It's not the same thing as socialism. It had different justifications and came about for different reasons.
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It's been refined a bit. I think you're missing it on the Gracchi brothers.

I still don't want a politician viewing my rights as something else.

Once the right people get incharge, and they will, I'll have little to no rights. That's partly how I see socialism. I become a subject, not a citizen. I become a slave, not a free man.
 
Watermark: read Adams' A Defense of Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (Vol. 1 should suffice) to see what republics and democracies he and others had studied.

Adams was one of the few poor-born Founders, so don't give me this Jeffersonian bullshit about him, ultra poor-born Hamilton, and the rest of the Federalists being aristocratic.
 
Still a Liberal

The Political Compass

Economic Left/Right: -7.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.08

pcgraphpng.php
 
Actually, considering that Ken wants to take away everyone's money and give it away to the IRS, I wonder how he can qualify as being that libertarian vs. authoritarian... :cof1:
 
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