Easy Truth

If you obey the laws of nature, are these laws the master of your rights? (that was metaphorical but helps in making my point) The law should protect your rights and everyone else's rights. No one is being subjugated when a neighbor objects to you burning leaves when the situation is incendiary. The neighbor has a right to their property too. Protection of their rights is not the same as a government supporting your subjugation or slavery. And the idea that a supporter of individual rights wants to burn leaves whenever they want is simply a smear. A person who is not aware of anyone else's rights can't be aware of their own, it's a description of a sociopath. Such a person is anti social and incapable of trade. That does not describe what an individualist is. True enough. But the current way of governing is out of control as you would agree. The exact source or solution is nuanced and confusing. But at it's core, treating innocents like they are guilty is a key indicator of evil.

And that's the bottom line. Everything else follows.

The title has some merit. But as a mandate for all to be vaccinated, it is actually a utilitarian operation.

The case against willful deception has been clearly made. But there is another element of honesty which is the act of revealing. As in "excessively revealing" can also mean "honesty". Evasion, deception, revealing (or transparency) muddy the water when identifying the virtue or the vice. And of course the societal version vs. the personal version

Sure, they could be mistaken but the issue is why are they so confident in their knowledge. If it's about the high stakes, meaning, "I can't afford to be wrong", then the heightened emotions are causing the irrationality. At that point anything goes, and if you have confidence in them, then you are in trouble. Otherwise, if they know they are being arbitrary, I don't know what the motive would be, other than maybe they want to hurt you/misguide you.

You're distinction between possession vs. ownership is nuanced and I'm trying to understand it. Either way that would imply that we have "certain rights" that we don't have depending of geographical area. Objectively/descriptively is true. I would like your acknowledgement or disagreement on that issue alone if possible. But the question I'm focused on is fundamentally a moral question i.e. should we have the right to keep someone out. And the answer seems to be: yes. But the method of keeping someone out may be different. Perhaps it is the degree of ownership or type of in the continuum of unowned to possessed to owned. The difference in approach by current law and procedure seems to be a one size fits all numerically based approach is a quotas per country (which has an arbitrary component, since the formation of a country is by chance). The only principle that is plausible for a right of entry, has to be property ownership. "You can't come in" has to have some ownership right behind it. "You can't come in without my consent", or the "alliance's consent" can only be an assertion of ownership. Perhaps the case being made is that an alliance is necessary for survival, and therefore, it's manifestation, in this case a country's borders is necessary for survival/life of the individual. That would imply that living in a society is necessity of survival for a rational man. In most cases it is preferable but not necessary in all cases.

What is the difference between a collective of/as "we the people", owning what is inside the border/territory vs. The alliance came up with a process of entry? From the outside, an alliance is a collective. And any claim (imposition of non use or entry) is communication of ownership, "I own this, don't come here, or don't touch this, it's mine". In this case, it is "us", the alliance that owns, and you can't come in "unless" you go by our rules. If there is no claim of ownership, isn't the alliance acting like it owns? You may have a strong case if it turns out that geography or territory is in fact the necessary element of a "country". That would imply that real estate is the determinant factor. The owner to be able to exploit/enjoy the land, will fund the process respecting ownership (if they are rational about it). The principle becomes "individual rights" within "the" territory ought to be respected vs. individual rights should be respected. Is this a correct understanding?

The issue I'm grappling with is the issue of "territory". Funding seems to be directly related to territory, but should it be? We can get cyber security services from a Russian company or maybe even a Chinese company. The internet, once connected to, has no natural boundary. Like an ocean. There may be territories established in the internet, but it's not delineated like a physical boundary is. And so the ethical funding structure is in flux. On one hand, individual rights applies to the individual, any individual, within or without the area that the government claims. But territory, a country, a geographical area delineates "non-contractual" rights, in this case, the freedom of movement and of communication. Those who are outside, don't have certain rights. But this is a claim of ownership of real estate by the collective, right? Funding seems to be related to "being inside" the border. As with the military, it is about defending the border. In this sense, the country has a right based on might. The boundary is there because it will be defended. There is no inherent national boundary, no identifiable property like the US, or Russia, or Korea etc. similar to a human body. A national boundary can shift. My body vs. your body will not shift. It seems that the main technique to fund proposed (in the links you sent) is via real estate assessments. And as justification: those would be to the self interest of rational people. But the question still comes up regarding the individual rights of those who either don't own real estate, or don't want to pay, or own real estate outside of the territory. Should governmental functions, i.e. security, arbitration services be provided by agencies that are outside of the territory? Or is territory a fundament characteristic of "government" and it's funding.

Then the police and judiciary will simply be funded. As in Justice is not contractual. There is no trade. (which makes sense) If so how is it to be funded?

Isn't politics a branch of ethics? Implication being that you can't separate the right treatment of others from ethics. But it can be a political problem to solve rather than a non political one. I tend to categorize it as "societal" vs. "individual/personal", rather than political vs ethical.

I don't know the origins of the Trolley problem analogy, but I assume that it refers to what the government should do i.e. do nothing. Going against the common thought process which is: do what is best for the "most". Keep most of them alive. There is some merit to that thought process, as it is used in the military and in triage situations. But a country is not a military organization and we are not in a triage situation where you ignore the ones you think will die. The hardest part of the argument against utilitarianism is to articulate what a society, or country is vs. an organization, as in the military organization. Communicating the fact that: as a country, although we have a president, we are not a business enterprise, with the president being the organizational president trying to do arithmetic calculations about which department to destroy to save others. In that situation, sins of omission do count, the CEO is fired for things that are not in his or her control. Similarly a president is not voted in sometimes because of "not doing something". Nevertheless, the two relationships, president of a corporation vs. president of a country are two different roles with different ethical guidance. The nature of "government to individual relationship" is the crux of the matter. The greatest threat to individualism currently seems to be utilitarianism, i.e. based on the arithmetic (or statistics) … because it can make sense to anyone. I would also hypothesis that it has something to do with herd mentality which has had tremendous survival value, therefore the attraction to it. Doing what most of the herd does is frequently or "usually" the best course of action (until it's not). In that way, the herd can seem to have an interest. The "most" seems to have an evolutionarily caused emotional significance. I also suspect that the solution to the trolley problem is to be a guide in going against a herd mentality bias.

Then the question still comes up: Is the Virtue of honesty in this context refer to one person or more than one person. As in: Is it virtuous to be honest with others, or oneself? It is easily demonstrable that sometimes you must say a lie. But avoiding evasion is a requirement of survival. I wonder if this is referring the the evil of "fraud" rather than lack of honesty. Although fraud has a requirement that honesty does not in that it requires an agreement that there will be honesty. Politically bad or good has to include for whom? Good for the ruler or the subject or both. But I could see that "good politics" or "a good political system" would include a high frequency of honesty between members, for it to function well for everyone.

I've always thought the virtue of honesty in this context was related to avoiding or preventing "evasion" which seemed to be at the root of evil. Was it to "not lie to others"?

Okay, where there is nothing to perceive, perception does not happen. Inside a container that was not filled up, it's empty (by definition). As long as we differentiate between thinking vs. the capability to think. We are capable of perceiving and thinking even without content. Otherwise when the content is present, we would not perceive it. Perception would be meaningless. Which seems to be an affirmation of the primacy of existence over consciousness.

I'm tying to understand "it is not primary" and the best I can do is: "you don't know" unless "you know that you know". So the ability to know that you know, indicates that you know (or is primary). In some ways invalidating the act of perception. Other than that, if you see a two dimensional picture of Selena, you don't know about the depth, so you never experienced it fully. But you know that it is Selena. Does that count as knowing? Isn't the existence of conceptual ability the negation of all this, meaning that that fact you abstracted, you know. Even though you didn't experience every angle, every nuance, everything about the entity.

Is the "experience", an experience of the "self" being a "spatio-temporal being", or is this to imply that everything is a thought?

I suppose both sides, Trump and the Democrats figured that out. Well, the gain of Crimea and easy access to it is of great military advantage to the Russians, and as far as keeping Russia weaker, it is of interest to the opponent. Now, how important it should be, i.e. the risk of nuclear war, I'm not sure. I was puzzled by the attitude of the article in that it's obvious that Ukraine should be held as a buffer state, like Poland was before world war 2 (my interpretation). I can see it as a potential strategy but not clear cut and obvious. It seems it was a political gamble, with the NATO side betting that Russia with it's dependence and interests would not invade. It goes against the idea that if you trade with the opponent that it is less likely that you will go to war with them. A similar question is coming up around our relations with China.

The the question comes up, why can a politically unimportant issue, induce such heavy spending? There has to be some political benefit, otherwise, the support for Ukraine is something that the US population does not care about. Meaning, it will not translate into votes. My suspicion is that it is in fact politically important in some way. Let us say Russia, succeeded in annexing Ukraine. That would be a political disaster for any president or party in power. Similarly, the Covid response most likely was due to the idea that if we have 1 million people dying and we looked like we did nothing, it would be a disaster for us (the party in charge). The fact is that this is politics. "The look of it" has a lot of bearing on how it is reacted to. And most people think that the government should get involved. Otherwise, the only other plausible explanation becomes: there is a conspiracy, that there is a cabal of elites that move the world in the direction that they want. We are blind sheep.

As far as I can see, a treaty with the USSR won't have much standing, since the entity (the USSR) was dissolved. Or does Russia inherit those agreements? It seems like it would amount to a letter of intent, not a contract. Otherwise it would imply that a promise was made and the immoral/guilty party is the entity that promised not to expand NATO. That is the argument that I constantly here from the pro Russian side and … seeing things from the Russian side.

I was referring to the promise that supposedly made by Bush to Putin that NATO would not expand. Meaning there was no such treaty. As far as the Minsk Treaties, I don't mind hearing succinctly who is claimed to have breached it and why.

Let us say that is true. Does that give a nation the right to invade? Why not just do another Crimea if that sliver is the only issue at stake. On one hand the invasion was because the fear of NATO. Now it seems it was because Ukraine was an immoral government. Even with your description, it's aggression would be limited to it's own population. There is no aggression against another country by the Ukraine. Especially when it gave up it's nuclear missiles. And for the west, that is in fact should be the overriding issue. To defend Ukraine's integrity to prove that it is better to give up your nuclear weapons than to keep them. That is our interest at stake. If there was an official treaty, you would have a case. But there is no officially recognized treaty. If there was such a treaty, was it in secret? Was it between only two people? Two heads of state? What are we elevating to a level of "treaty"? The fact is that there has been a cold war going on and an official agreement needs a third party to witness. Both sides should know that.

A fundamental difference in the situation between Cuba and Ukraine is that Cuba had nuclear missiles on it's soil. Ukraine does not. But there is the potential once it does join NATO. Keep in mind after the nuclear devices were taken off of Cuba, the United states did not threaten to invade Cuba for being in the sphere of the Soviet Union. Meaning all sorts of threats existed because of the alliance with the USSR but did not evoke an ultimatum from the US. The Cuban response was specifically taken in response to the missiles "existing" and more being delivered (otherwise the USSR ships could be allowed them to be searched). In the case of the Ukraine, Russia is acting against a potential threat. This type reaction would also be justification for the action that the US took in Iraq. A potential of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue. They did not exist, yet the sense of being threated is what justified the war. Meanwhile, the US was not ok with Cuba or Grenada or Panama acting against it's interests and took military action. If the US had every right to embargo and invade, then it would be okay for Russia to have done the same thing regarding Ukraine. That is the current justification given for the action by Russia, since the US had a right to react to Cuba and Russia has a right to react to Ukraine. The crux of the matter is: should any country have a right to escalate like that? There is the argument that the US over stepped it's bounds. That would mean Russian also over stepped it's bounds. In that case both the US and Russia should NOT have acted using an ultimatum. So is it okay for the US to have reacted to Cuba the way that it did?

Let us accept the premise that NATO or the united states put pressure, or was threatening enough. Then Russia was retaliating or defending itself against agression. Then one could say that China is defending itself over Taiwan, that the Arabs are defending themselves over Israel, that Iran is defending itself over what happened a long time ago. And then in turn, the west is defending itself against them defending themselves. NATO is a threat, it is meant to be a threat. At the heart of the argument is: NATO should not be a threat. Is it now a bigger threat since more countries have joined it? Should we now expect more violence from Russia? Is it more justified now? The case has to be made that Russia had a right to use violence at this stage of the game. Or shall we say Putin has a right to do that. The west set up a coup in Ukraine, fine. Russia set up an election to separate Crimea. Why not do that again? Why get hundreds of thousands of people killed and bring the world closer to a nuclear accidental war? The undeniable fact is that any country that makes territorial claims that it expects through violence is a threat. China is a threat to almost all countries surrounding it. That is why they are all beefing up their militaries. Do we have that happening with the US and its neighbors? No because there are no territorial claims. There has not been any threat of violence from NATO, only an allowance of countries joining. That is what people and the press see. What are they missing?

So, we are to believe that a Nazi regime will tolerate a Jewish president. I guess these are the good kind of Nazis we hear about. With this reasoning, NATO should in fact be frightened. It means that Russia would drive into the neighbors of Ukraine to create the buffer zone that it would supposedly need. (since military strategy requires he go "much further") No wonder, they are all beefing up their militaries. Putin obviously did not mean to occupy the capital Kyiv. He obviously did not mean to invade Ukraine. It is because of his benevolent nature, that he is in retreat right now. Tell me more, I'm willing to believe anything because I'm not a "proper" military expert.