I said earlier on another thread, I will NEVER, EVER support the loss of US sovereignty.

I do not hope, wish, or root for global government, but I know it is coming.

I know it is coming because there are so many people who think like TSGRACHUS, who support world government and believe like Strobe Talbot, that the nation state has outlived it's usefulness.

The American people have allowed NAFTA, GATT, as well as a host of other treaties which are chipping away at our freedoms and destroying our economy.

Why would I possibly believe they will not willingly surrender US sovereignty?

If this forum is any indication of the American people, then US sovereignty
doesn't have a chance.

The operative concept in "freedom" is "coercion." Politically, freedom has only one meaning: "the absence of physical coercion."

As others have clearly pointed out, "freedom" has nothing to do with consequences, and this is the fundamental flaw in the OP's argument. Without any explanation, without any justification, the OP moves from (and I'm paraphrasing), "Freedom has no meaning." To, "Freedom means the mitigation of negative consequences." Not only does he employ this intellectually deceptive slight of hand, he also leaves out any explanation of what negative consequences are.

What I find interesting is the OP continually refers to "freedom" being "devoid of significance," yet still manages to ascribe qualities to it - like its contrast with rights and its value neutrality. It would be as if I said the word "flubglasterist" meant nothing, yet still had the qualities, and therefore the meaning, of "bull-shit artist." If the OP really believed "freedom" had no meaning, then there's no way it could "refer solely to an objective, observable reality."
What physical coercion is the mine owner exerting on the miners? By simply being the only employer in town? What if the mine didn't exist at all? What viable options would exist then? Would the miners be even less free?

What about the mine owner? Is he truly free based upon your argument here? What if no one wants to work in the mine at any wage? Aren't the laborers then abridging the mine owner's freedom?

Like the OP, you seem to want to divorce cause from effect; you want one without the other. You want choices without consequences. You want someone to let you kill the goose, and still collect the eggs.

Imagine your hypothetical under different circumstances: suppose a town with no employers. Are the inhabitants of this town not free? If not, what is the cause for their lack of freedom? Is it the fact they have not even a single "viable choice?" Since there's no evil capitalist to pin the blame upon, it must be.

What if an evil capitalist does decide to set up a mine in this town; is he now an agent of freedom, or an agent of slavery? The inhabitants have more choices now, doesn't that indicate an increase in freedom? From your argument, that "viable choices" are the determinant of freedom, we would have to conclude the mine owner is an agent of freedom. Yet, if the mine owner exercises his own choices he'll very likely be branded an agent of slavery. Unless the evil capitalist provides everyone a job, at the wage they request, with the benefits they demand, and the work schedule they dictate - including, presumbably, not working at all - he's limiting the choices of the potential workers and is therefore abridging their freedom.

So, we're left with the classic contradiction accepted by all liberals: damned if you do, damned if you don't. If the evil capitalist doesn't set up operations, he's an agent of slavery - or, at the very least, not an agent of freedom. If the evil capitalist does set up operations, then he's an agent of slavery. It's a wonder anyone ever does anything given the derision heaped upon those who produce.

I agree. The capitalist system failed repeatedly, and finally broke down altogether in the 1930s, and has been replaced by a mixed capitalist-socialist hybrid. Interestingly -- and totally off-topic -- Karl Marx should perhaps have foreseen this (although he didn't), since it follows from the dialectic, what we have now being a synthesis of the thesis (capitalism) and the antithesis (socialism).

No, not necessarily, and certainly not on every conceivable issue. For example, both have a cooperative interest in the commercial success of the company. But where their interests conflict, then yes, it's a zero-sum game. That's often true, of course, with regard to wages, hours, working conditions, and other things that represent costs of doing business to the company but profits to the worker.

Insofar as there is conflict, yes: to maximize liberty, weaken the strong and strengthen the weak, to approach equality within reasonable limits. Where interests are in cooperation, however, the issue does not arise.

Why only PHYSICAL coercion? And perhaps you would do well to define that. If coercion through economic necessity physical? Also, suppose the coercion is psychological rather than physical? Actually, ALL coercion is psychological even when it IS physical.

You're not paraphrasing, you're misquoting. What I said was that, by itself without qualifiers, the word has no meaning, not that it has no meaning, period.

Much of the rest of your argument appears to follow from this misquotation, and is therefore not worthy of a response.

Are you asking a moral question or a practical one? That is, are you asking whether the mine employee is free, or are you asking whether we should blame the mine owner for the mine employee's serf-like conditions?

Whether the mine owner is himself exerting deliberate coercion or merely taking advantage of circumstances may, perhaps, have a bearing on the second question of blame. It has none whatsoever on the first question of whether the miner is free.

Why bring up an impossible hypothetical? There never has been and never will be such a situation as that. I will say, purely for the sake of discussion, that if the mine workers held all the cards and could dictate conditions and the mine owner was not at liberty to walk away from the deal, then no, the mine owner would not be free. However, that is not a realistically possible situation.

Actually, as is typical with you I've observed, you're trying to reduce a complex, multi-answer question into a simple binary yes or no. It's not a question of WHETHER the owner sets up operations, but rather HOW.

What other type of coercion could the government bring to bear?
Right. Well, let's use the actual quotes then, shall we?
The beginning of your post, which establishes your belief that "freedom" means nothing unless modifiers are attached.
Your assertion that "freedom," sans any qualifiers, has particular attributes. If you've placed modifiers and qualifiers to "freedom" in this quote, perhaps you're employing your own grammar as well as your own dictionary.
Looks like a practical question to me.
To reduce his argument to its essential elements. One purpose of hypothetical examples is to promote discussion for further investigation. "[F]or the sake of discussion."
Wouldn't really matter if it's realistically possible or not. The fact remains that workers do have the ability to refuse to work for any wage, therefore the mine owner's freedom, according to your philosophy, is dependent upon the workers' willingness to work. Even were we to allow my hypothetical to include some workers will work for any wage, the fact remains that some will not, perhaps enough so that the employer cannot operate his business. Even if he did have enough who would work for any wage, that some will not is a limitation on the employers freedom, therefore the employer cannot be said to be completely free - again, according to your philosophy. We're left with the fact that, according to your philosophy, neither are free. Both are enslaved by the other. To argue for the workers and against the employer merely demonstrates your bias, and thus represents no valid argument.
And, as is your modus operandi, you're trying to make an exceedingly simple issue complex so you can show us all how many neat words you know - yet don't know the definition of. It's a very effective technique when lacking any logic or reason: Make your argument so complex and convoluted that those who agree with your conclusion are left awed by your intellect, and can only stand slack-jawed and say, "Yea, what he said." While those who don't agree with your conclusion are so confused at how you even arrived at it they can find no way to refute it.

how laughable. too many fools think free trade equals loss of sovereignty. free trade agreements usually make the stronger nation more sovereign because it expands the free market which its beefed up businesses can dominate. the british preached free trade at the height of their empire. why? because their economy was stronger and more advanced than most others. of course they wanted 'free' markets. markets free for them to dominate. get with it.

free trade in europe has made europe far more stronger, far more sovereign, and much more stable, without any EU members seriously considering sovereignty in foreign policy, defense policy, etc.

__________________
Anyone with a vision needs to see an eye doctor. -Helmut Schmidt.

"Mrs. Palin, which specific journals and news sources do you read? (after being asked once)"

"Oh, All of them!"

the typical american would wonder if the US in this forums title was some different entity than the united states he lives in. ie, he/she is way too ignorant.

__________________
Anyone with a vision needs to see an eye doctor. -Helmut Schmidt.

"Mrs. Palin, which specific journals and news sources do you read? (after being asked once)"

"Oh, All of them!"

Are we talking only about the government?

In any case, all coercion is psychological. It invokes fear and intimidation in the victim. If it doesn't do that, it fails to coerce.

Insert any qualifiers or modifiers you wish regarding whose freedom to do what, and I believe the statement will remain true. However, that is in fact subject to test. If you can show some exceptions, I will take them under advisement.

Not to me. You weren't asking anything about the miner, only about the mine owner. Suppose that the miner's wife threatened to leave him unless he accepted whatever conditions the mine owner offered. Would the mine owner be to blame for that? No. Would the miner be free? No, again. These are separate questions.

Actually, yes, it does -- and I believe this states volumes about the difference between your approach to things and mine, and why you find me so frustrating. You're a rationalist, I'm an empiricist. To you, everything comes down to valid reasoning from absolute first principles, and you have tried before to get me to agree to some first principles from which to reason. I have refused to do so, and this is why you get so annoyed.

To me, everything comes down to the reality we observe and experience, about which we can never know everything necessary for certainty, so that there are no questions that can be absolutely and finally answered. There are no first principles. There are only hypotheses, subject to empirical verification. The test for every idea is to hold it up against the real world and see whether it describes it accurately. If it doesn't, then there is something wrong either with the reasoning we employed, or with the assumptions and postulates on which it was based. If, on examination, we find no flaw in the reasoning, then the postulates themselves -- what we took for first principles -- were faulty.

The principles which you articulate, when put into practice, result in a reality that is gruesome and cruel. It is unacceptable, and therefore when the logical conclusion from those principles is to accept this state of affairs anyway, then I can only conclude that there is a flaw in those principles.

It is useless to try to get me to agree to any kind of absolute premise to reason from. I do not believe in doing so, because I know that absolute first principles are only valid in the context of a wholly imaginary system such as pure mathematics, not in relation to the real world. If I do agree to any premises for the sake of discussion, such agreement will be tentative, and if it leads places I find unacceptable, I shall with perfect liberty backtrack and reject the premises after all, concluding that I made a mistake in agreeing to them. Because I know that we can never reduce uncertainty to zero, and all conclusions must always be held tentatively.

It may well be that this epistemological difference is unbridgeable. I make no apologies, however, because I know the errors that rationalism can lead to, and have no wish to make those errors.

You did frame the discussion that way.
(emph. added)

Regardless, we need not only be speaking in political terms. The principle concept which differentiates freedom from its opposite is voluntary action versus compulsion. No need to make it any more complicated than that.
So? What type of coercion would be psychological, yet not physical? More to the point, what type of coercion would the government bring to bear which is psychological and not physical?
I'd prefer you insert the qualifiers and modifiers. Regardless, my point stands: you move from making the claim "freedom" requires modifiers in order to have meaning, yet still assert it has attributes without them. Furthermore, since I did not misquote you, and you therefore have no further means of escape, I'm sure you'll find the rest of my argument "worthy of a response." Until that time, I'm going to have to call flubglasterist.
I'm not surprised.
Why would the miner not be free? Is he incapable of following his own will? Is he a liberal?
And wholly unrelated to the point you quoted.
Do you know your own name? Does reality exist?

What's really funny about your little diatribe is your denial of first principles is based upon... wait for it... wait for it... first principles! What are statements like "everything comes down to the reality we observe and experience, about which we can never know everything necessary for certainty, so that there are no questions that can be absolutely and finally answered" if not first principles? Moreover, every thread of yours I've read begins not from an empirical viewpoint, but from a wholly theoretical stance. This very thread is a testament to that fact.

No, I find you frustrating because your willingness to "backtrack" (as you call it) includes reserving the right to redefine terms so they validate your world view. Yours is not an empirical process, TSG. You don't move from the observable and real to a conclusion; you move from a conclusion and seek perceptions to back it up. When you can't find them, you simply change your perceptions, or change the definitions of what you can't deny.

Five paragraphs and not a single mention, much less refutation, of the logic in my argument.

No, although I understand the confusion. "In the context of politics" does not mean that we are talking exclusively about the government as a limiter of someone's freedom to do something. We might be talking about someone or something else as a limiter of freedom, and the government as a protector of freedom. That is a political discussion, too.

Please see my response to Marcus, above. This obviously becomes important considering your response to the wife example.

One in which the threat of punishment is not physical in nature. I gave an example already. It is not the punishment per se but the fear of it and desire to avoid it that are coercive. That fear can exist without any actual physical threat, if either a) the victim believes (falsely) that there is a physical danger, or b) the victim fears the non-physical consequences enough to control his actions.

Please see my response to Marcus above. Everyone is always capable of following his own will. If that is the definition of freedom, then everyone is always free, and freedom becomes a tautology, meaningless under all circumstances, not merely when unqualified. Obviously that is not what it means.

If one's behavior is shaped by threat of punishment, then to that extent one is not free. That is the usual meaning of the word in ordinary usage.

I used to make exactly that argument when I felt like questioning scientific method. It is not correct, for the simple reason that I believe empiricism to be the proper approach to reality not because that is an assumed first principle, but because I find from experience and practice that it works. If I were to find that it did not, I would abandon it -- however I can't see that happening, since my touchstone is conformity with observed reality, and for observation of reality to fail to conform to observed reality is absurd.

Empiricism does not disallow the use of theory, it only insists that the test for theory is always its conformity to observed reality. If you wish to refute any point I make in a fashion that makes sense, then do so by reference to concrete evidence in the real world, not to permutations of logic based on definitions or philosophical principles.

Now that's just silly. Definitions aren't even statements of reality. They are merely agreements as to how we shall use words. No matter how you define a word, the reality it is meant to describe remains what it is, unchanged by any understanding of what the word means, and so "redefining terms to validate one's world view" is making no claims about reality whatsoever. You should be able to get around that very easily. Certainly I can. This is a perfect example of the folly of rationalism: one is more concerned with the models, such as words, which we use to describe reality than with reality itself.

And anyway, you are a fine one to talk! Who was it that redefined "slavery" so as to render a doctor making a six-figure income a "slave" merely because he is required to provide services to an impoverished patient? Well, the answer to that is simple: Words mean whatever we want them to mean; if you want to define "slavery" so that it includes that, then fine -- but in that case, "slavery" becomes something not necessarily objectionable at all. The reasons we don't like slavery (as conventionally defined) are not that it violates some sort of abstract principle, or that there is anything inherently bad about that WORD, but because it HURTS -- it results in physical pain, emotional pain, loss of hope, broken families, despair, suffering, and murder. Without these attributes, the thing we are talking about does not deserve the objections that we apply to slavery, even if we may twist the language about so as to apply the word to something altogether benign.

But that's exactly what empiricism is about. One does begin with observations, but then one forms a hypothesis to explain them, and seeks further explanations to test the hypothesis. Which comes first, chicken or egg? In fact one set of observations does come first, but is not always stated openly, as it is generally understood to be obvious.

In any case, you are mistaken. I can, and do, revise my opinions based on observations. That's why I'm no longer a Marxist. (Marxism and libertarianism have this in common, that they are constructions of theory without conformity to the real world that far too often become dogma.)

As that logic was based on faulty premises, it requires no rebuttal. As I said, talk real-world, please. I have no interest in anything else.

This is one of the utterly idiotic acts of mental masterbation. If it is being argued that anyone who might be deterred from a specific action not by force, but merely because they aren't too stupid to realize that every choice we make every day has consequences, some good, some bad, then freedom can not exist.

In some people's warped view of the world, "freedom" can only come from acts which actually reduces the freedom of some in order to insulate others from the possible negative consequences of their own free choices.

You are free to walk into an intersection when the "do not walk" light is flashing. You are likely to get hit by a car and killed, that most people are not so stupid as to choose to do so, doesn't mean they are not free, it means that they are not fools.

In virtually every example you give, people are still absolutely free to chose different courses of action, but each of those choices comes with consequences. That is reality, and anyone who thinks that the world is a worse off place because of this reality, that we would be better off if individual choices were freer of consequence, is almost pathologically deluded.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

No, thanks. I'd rather you explicitly state your argument against the definition of freedom. That way I can avoid wasting any more time than I already have.
We're not discussing threats. We're discussing freedom. What can you, or anyone do to abridge my freedom that would not involve physical coercion?
How, in either case, is freedom abridged? What are "non-physical consequences?" You begin with the principle that one has a "desire to avoid" the punishment. This implies one has the ability to pick between the options of complying or not complying. Which presumes freedom.

Lack of fear is not freedom, the existence of fear is not constraint.
It's not what it means, and I've made that plainly clear. The definition of freedom is "the absence of physical coercion."

The miner is free, unless you want to argue his wife somehow forcibly, physically makes him accept the wages offered. Perhaps you'd like to explain how should could do this?
Perhaps in TSGracchus's dictionary, but not in any of the definitions presented. No one can escape consequences, regardless of how they wish to define the causes.
None of which addresses the point that you do depend upon first principles. For someone who claims nothing can be known absolutely, you sure do make an awful lot of absolute statements.

Your reluctance (inability?) to address this point hasn't gone unnoticed.
I understand your reluctance to adhere to any concrete definitions - how else would you be able to "backtrack?" But definitions are a requisite part of any epistemology.
How do you know any of this? I thought "we can never know everything necessary for certainty, so that there are no questions that can be absolutely and finally answered?"
Let me see if I understand you:

1) Freedom is dependent not only upon physical coercion, but also upon psychological coercion. Therefore, one could said to be not free if someone else were to simply threaten him.
2) An opposite of freedom is slavery.
3) Requiring someone to do something against their will would not be considered freedom.
4) Requiring a doctor to provide services is not the same slavery.

That about sum it up?

Any rational reader of the referenced discussion would conclude it was I who stayed true to the definition of slavery, while you simply wanted to steer away from an uncomfortable term by redefining it.
Can you even see the contradictions in what you write? Is empiricism about having a conclusion, then finding evidence to back it up? Furthermore, what in the world would be "generally understood to be obvious" when there are no first principles?
What were the faulty premises?

CFR spokesperson Richard Gardner once said.......

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