[Rainbow Crow]

I was thinking to myself how liberals and conservatives seem to have different definitions of tyranny.

To a conservative, tyranny is being told what to do by another.

To liberals, tyranny seems to be [1] failure. If the system allows you to fail, then that is tyranny. If we look at the seemingly endless parade of protectionist policies that liberals come up with, this seems to me to be an accurate assessment of how liberals define tyranny. Liberals also seem to define tyranny as [2] being prevented from seeking pleasure. Conservative prohibitions against promiscuous sex are the most obvious example of [2], but a more concise example of both elements at play at the same time is the marijuana legalization movement.

To wit, I saw an episode of the Colbert Report recently where Steven Colbert suggested that the American Dream is being able to get high on marijuana. Liberals do not merely want to legalize marijuana however; they also want to give unlimited assistance to people who ruin their lives through drug abuse.

To me this seems to be a conundrum: first they provide people with access to something that can potentially ruin their lives, simply because those people will get pleasure from that thing; then they want to provide limitless aid to people who ruin their own lives with the thing that they gave them access to.

The heart of this conundrum seems to be naivete; liberals seem to think that resources are unlimited and therefore aid given to people who harm themselves can also be unlimited. How else could it be anything but tyranny to not give help to a person in need? The conundrum arises not only when resource issues come into play but also with the fact that they have caused their own limitless problem. Here, liberals also reject that pleasure-seeking can have negative effects that can't be repaired (otherwise, they would put a cap on the amount of aid that such a person can receive). As such, liberals not only define tyranny as failure; they also define tyranny as a prevention of pleasure seeking (such as marijuana being illegal).

Conservatives do not have this problem. While many of us want drugs like marijuana to remain illegal, we also don't want to give limitless aid to people who still find access to these drugs.

Any thoughts?

[Travesty]

I'm against any legalization of marijuana. Fuck them. Here I am jumping though hoops meeting drug dealers at midnight avoiding police and shit and now they want it to be legal for them?? Hell no. Kids these days think they are entitled to everything. Weed is special because it is illegal people want what they cant have when they have it they will move on to what they cant have.

[Soix]

I thought one reason behind conservatives being against marijuana legalization is because the people who take it would "fail" (at what? Life?), so it seems like tyranny to a conservative is failure. Also, isn't it tyranny (for a conservative by your definition, RC) to keep marijuana illegal since it is the authorities telling you what you cannot do.

[Rilzik]

A better example of liberals fucking themselves over is the culture of divorce. A fight mostly lead by middle class white women. It has lead to the utter failure of entire communities, millions of people behind bars, higher poverty rates and lower educational achievement for children of broken homes. No doubt there are other contributing factors to these problems, but it is clear that the women's movement help encourage these problems. For example, anyone want to guess what percentage of inmates are from fatherless homes?

I just think it is funny that these college educated upper middle class white women "won" all these rights for women... fast forward 20 years and the result is that these upper middle class college educated white women still have very low divorce rates... EVERYBODY else's marriages are falling a part at disgusting rates. And liberals don't blink.

I'm one of these upper middle class college educated white people so I don't really give a shit. It's just funny how poor people jump right on board with this shit.

[The Immortal Goon]

To a conservative, tyranny is being told what to do by another...Liberals also seem to define tyranny as being prevented from seeking pleasure.

So, really, you both have the same definition of tyranny. You're just positing that conservatives are allowed to put tyranny onto liberals.

[Kosmonaut]

Liberals aren't interested in pleasure per se. We merely want people to choose for themselves what to do. It's not conservatives or anybody else's business to interfere with what people want to do as long as it doesn't hurt others. Smoking pot in your living room doesn't hurt anyone, but possibly the smoker. And they have the right to do so.
Most of marijuana users won't turn out to be junkies who fail at life. We have never said "let's give taxpayer money to marijuana smokers". Some of us might have wanted to provide healthcare and a safety net to provide help for those with real addictions, no matter if it is heroin addiction, alcoholism, etc. Even then liberalism is a wide ideology, allowing the ideas to vary.
Liberalism is based on belief that everybody should be as free as possible. The governments' only task is to help secure those freedoms.

[Rainbow Crow]

I probably should have focused more on the pleasure-seeking aspect since the control part is not so clear cut. I do still think that the liberal and conservative definitions of tyranny are different, or perhaps it has more to do with the definition of liberty. Apparently no one actually addressed the conundrum I was pointing out about marijuana (I think Kosmo is a good new poster, but I also think he is evading the question, though he is right that liberalism is very broad) which makes me think that I might still be onto something.

[SpaciousBox]

I will confess myself a little confused. Whichever way I seem to read it, I cannot find any relation between what is being discussed and tyranny. Let’s have a look at the dictionary for a second, as we need to make sure we are all discussing off the same perspective:

tyr•an•ny [tir-uh-nee]
noun, plural tyr•an•nies.
1. arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority. Synonyms: despotism, absolutism, dictatorship.
2. the government or rule of a tyrant or absolute ruler.
3. a state ruled by a tyrant or absolute ruler.
4. oppressive or unjustly severe government on the part of any ruler.
5. undue severity or harshness.

Whilst conservatives will never be socially liberal, or promote liberty as we see it, I wouldn’t say they are so bad as to be tyrannical. We may – on an offhand moment – call tyranny whilst angry, but I doubt a liberal could seriously look at conservative policy / beliefs and decide they were guilty of such a heinous crime. Having considered that definition, the whole “preventing the seeking of pleasure”, or the “failure of the system”, are utterly unrelated and don’t seem to enter into a conversation about tyranny. With this defined, I will answer your further points under that assumption.

Seeking Pleasure. This is an interesting though incorrect notion. Pleasure seeking doesn’t even come into it, actually. Liberalism in this context is promoting freedom relative to the harm principle – as Kosmonaut correctly mentions – and under that umbrella will indeed come a lot of things that could fit into the definition of pleasure. It also however includes a lot of things that do not, such as the right to die. Trying to look at it from a perspective of pleasure is disingenuous though, as it would seem to be a scapegoat of reason: You appear to be trying to define social liberty along hedonistic lines, instead of the far more rational basis that we have no reason to prevent these things.

Let’s use your example of Marijuana, one of the slightly more controversial subjects and one that probably sits on the line between ok and not ok. Some liberals believe it should be legalised as there is no evidence what so ever that it is any more dangerous than alcohol, or cigarette smoking, or anything else our society permits. The other liberals tend to accept this science, but would argue (as I assume you do) that it is a gateway drug, leading people onto a far more harmful lifestyle. Whichever way you look at it however, the question is not about pleasure seeking, but rather on what basis we can justify interference. The same is the case with all other things liberals fight for; if there is no rational justification against it, then it shouldn’t be against the law.

liberals seem to think that resources are unlimited and therefore aid given to people who harm themselves can also be unlimited.

This is probably the one very valid point you bring up. Liberals, unlike conservatives, do not preach individual responsibility, and so will always be interested in helping those in need. It is correct to ask why we might support the legalisation of things that can damage you (such as drug use), but then again it might also be correct to ask why anything that can damage you should be legal at all! What about knives, cars, alcohol, girl-friends… these all lead to issues that we collectively pay for in support of damaged people. If you wish to open the gates of aid for potential harm, then you must logically apply it to everything else. At the end of the day though, there is a certain amount of risk in everything, and for the example of marijuana, it is relatively safe compared to alcohol and tobacco. So will I hear you asking to ban those also? Or will we both accept that rather than addressing the tool, we should instead be addressing the cultural and economic issues that cause people to end up on their downwards spiral. Liberals call this beast poverty, though I imagine we won’t be agreeing there.

[Rainbow Crow]

I don't agree that poverty is to blame every time someone hurts themselves, if that is really what you are saying. Conservatives don't blame society when someone hurts themselves either. Sometimes we try to ban things that are harmful, but since personal responsibility is our thing, we don't try to force others to provide aid when someone makes a bad choice and harms themself. Private charity is of course acceptable.

I was going too far with my tyranny talk as I put it, but I still think that social liberalism still seems to be, at the extreme end, about getting government to pay for trying to erase the harmful effects of pleasure-seeking. This is why they push drug use and free drug rehab, sexual liberation and the welfare state, and so on.

[Kosmonaut]

I don't agree that poverty is to blame every time someone hurts themselves, if that is really what you are saying. Conservatives don't blame society when someone hurts themselves either. Sometimes we try to ban things that are harmful, but since personal responsibility is our thing, we don't try to force others to provide aid when someone makes a bad choice and harms themself. Private charity is of course acceptable.

I was going too far with my tyranny talk as I put it, but I still think that social liberalism still seems to be, at the extreme end, about getting government to pay for trying to erase the harmful effects of pleasure-seeking. This is why they push drug use and free drug rehab, sexual liberation and the welfare state, and so on.

Pro-freedom isn't pro-drug use. Just because liberals want everybody to have a right to use one drug, marijuana, without getting jail time doesn't mean we want everybody to smoke it. We are not going to show a joint in everybody's hand. I would prefer to have people educated that even smoking marijuana has risks. But regardless, you are making marijuana seem like it will make every single of its users into some junkies that never do anything. That is not the case.

[Rainbow Crow]

You are really misconstruing my argument here. Giving people access to drugs and then giving them free drug rehab and welfare is trying to get government to remove the potentially harmful effects of pleasure-seeking, isn't it?

[Kosmonaut]

You are really misconstruing my argument here. Giving people access to drugs and then giving them free drug rehab and welfare is trying to get government to remove the potentially harmful effects of pleasure-seeking, isn't it?

Free drug rehab is for people, whose lives have been destroyed by their addiction. But marijuana doesn't cause such a strong addiction, if at all, that people would ruin their lives over it. Marijuana can't cause harmful effects that need to be solved at a rehab clinic. Letting people use free rehab for illegal drugs is understandable to me. Mainstream liberals have never supported giving people access to all the drugs, such as cocaine.

Liberals believe in responsibility, but also, unlike conservatives, in a chance for redemption. Your original argument was that liberals want to provide people with something that can potentially ruin their lives, and that we want to then help the people who ruined their lives. That's not the case. A person can't truly be free, if he's a slave of his addictions. Therefore, offering help to those, who have mistaken in their lives, is what we think is the right thing. People make mistakes; should they be punished for that for their whole lives?

Off-topic: I have a question regarding conservatism: why do some conservatives think it's okay to not allow abortions, but then not help a poor family with raising their kid they weren't allowed to abort?

[Joe Liberty]

I do still think that the liberal and conservative definitions of tyranny are different, or perhaps it has more to do with the definition of liberty.

I think it does have to do with their definition of liberty: the way I see it, liberals definite tyranny as not only failure, but discomfort. Liberals think people are tyrannized by circumstances: if you're hungry it doesn't mean you spent your money poorly or you haven't developed marketable skills, it means there's food out there that should be yours but somebody else has it, so he should give it to you. If you're poor it's not because you make bad financial decisions or don't save your money, it means somebody else has money that should be yours and he should give you some of it. Liberals see the world as one big crap shoot: either you're "fortunate" or "unfortunate". Neither success nor failure is a consequence of your choices and actions, it's all just dumb luck. That's a fatal flaw.

(Conservatives, while I think they believe tyranny is a conscious, deliberate act on the part of another person or persons and not just random circumstances, they also believe liberty should have a fence around it: "you're free to do whatever we don't proscribe, even when we proscribe things (like homosexual marriage) that are none of our business.")

To me this seems to be a conundrum: first they provide people with access to something that can potentially ruin their lives, simply because those people will get pleasure from that thing; then they want to provide limitless aid to people who ruin their own lives with the thing that they gave them access to.

It is a conundrum, I agree. And it's one they deal with haphazardly, as one would expect when there is no guiding principle. They want to decriminalize marijuana and then subsidize aid to people who abuse it, but at the same time we see that the Nanny State by necessity becomes more restrictive: witness smoking bans which were the first real restrictions to result from the State paying for health insurance, and now we're seeing "bad food" bans popping up. This kind of stuff will only get worse as the Nanny State grows. So the liberal desire to round off corners and make life comfortable at all times will inevitably lead to less liberty, not to mention they'll run out of resources (as Margaret Thatcher warned, they'll run out of other people's money). What then?

Off-topic: I have a question regarding conservatism: why do some conservatives think it's okay to not allow abortions, but then not help a poor family with raising their kid they weren't allowed to abort?

I've never met a conservative who doesn't think poor families should be helped. They tend to believe government shouldn't do it, but that's different than not wanting to help them at all.

[Pants-of-dog]

I think it does have to do with their definition of liberty: the way I see it, liberals definite tyranny as not only failure, but discomfort. Liberals think people are tyrannized by circumstances: if you're hungry it doesn't mean you spent your money poorly or you haven't developed marketable skills, it means there's food out there that should be yours but somebody else has it, so he should give it to you. If you're poor it's not because you make bad financial decisions or don't save your money, it means somebody else has money that should be yours and he should give you some of it. Liberals see the world as one big crap shoot: either you're "fortunate" or "unfortunate". Neither success nor failure is a consequence of your choices and actions, it's all just dumb luck. That's a fatal flaw.

You'll probably be relieved to know that liberals don't actually think this.

We understand that people can become poor by spending your money poorly or not developing marketable skills, but the number of people who become poor because of this are few and far between. People tend to become poor because a) they are born that way, b) had a run of bad luck (e.g. medical bankruptcy) or c) some other reason beyond their control (e.g. worldwide financial crisis).

Yes, "we" (by that I mean you and me and everyone else who tacitly supports the social contract) take "your" (by that I mean the exact same group as before) money and provide basic social services to those who are poor and to everyone else.

It is a conundrum, I agree. And it's one they deal with haphazardly, as one would expect when there is no guiding principle. They want to decriminalize marijuana and then subsidize aid to people who abuse it, but at the same time we see that the Nanny State by necessity becomes more restrictive: witness smoking bans which were the first real restrictions to result from the State paying for health insurance, and now we're seeing "bad food" bans popping up. This kind of stuff will only get worse as the Nanny State grows. So the liberal desire to round off corners and make life comfortable at all times will inevitably lead to less liberty, not to mention they'll run out of resources (as Margaret Thatcher warned, they'll run out of other people's money). What then?

Decriminalisation and a strong network for getting off addiction will result in less drug addiction overall, which will result in less costs due to drugs, both for policing drug related crimes and for the costs of addiction therapy.

Long term savings.

[Julian]

To a conservative, tyranny is being told what to do by another

for a conservative tyranny is rich people having to follow the same rules as poor people

To liberals, tyranny seems to be failure. If the system allows you to fail, then that is tyranny.

ony if people born with fewer life opportunities (or who suffer bad luck) are more likely to fail than rich people .

Conservatives do not have this problem. While many of us want drugs like marijuana to remain illegal, we also don't want to give limitless aid to people who still find access to these drugs.

Conservatives generally don't want to give aid to anybody. even tax dollars levied on the working classes should go to "respectable causes"

[Beal]

A better example of liberals fucking themselves over is the culture of divorce. A fight mostly lead by middle class white women. It has lead to the utter failure of entire communities, millions of people behind bars, higher poverty rates and lower educational achievement for children of broken homes. No doubt there are other contributing factors to these problems, but it is clear that the women's movement help encourage these problems. For example, anyone want to guess what percentage of inmates are from fatherless homes?

I just think it is funny that these college educated upper middle class white women "won" all these rights for women... fast forward 20 years and the result is that these upper middle class college educated white women still have very low divorce rates... EVERYBODY else's marriages are falling a part at disgusting rates. And liberals don't blink.

I'm one of these upper middle class college educated white people so I don't really give a shit. It's just funny how poor people jump right on board with this shit.

Though we may not agree completely on the mechanism, I think it is true that socially liberal policies contribute to the problems you list here. However, how does this qualify as liberals fucking themselves over? Criminals, dropouts, the poor? Who do you think they vote for?

[Joe Liberty]

You'll probably be relieved to know that liberals don't actually think this.

You must know different liberals than I do. I'm not putting words in anybody's mouth, I know more than a few liberals who think exactly that.

We understand that people can become poor by spending your money poorly or not developing marketable skills, but the number of people who become poor because of this are few and far between.

Our perceptions are quite different, I think the ratio is reversed. I know quite a few poor people too, and they ain't poor because poverty just fell into their laps out of the clear blue sky. I also know people who at one time or another were poor, but aren't anymore. The difference between the two demographics is more than just luck.

People tend to become poor because a) they are born that way, b) had a run of bad luck (e.g. medical bankruptcy) or c) some other reason beyond their control (e.g. worldwide financial crisis).

So, essentially you think exactly the way I described above.

[Pants-of-dog]

You must know different liberals than I do. I'm not putting words in anybody's mouth, I know more than a few liberals who think exactly that.

Hello. I am a liberal who does not think that.

Our perceptions are quite different, I think the ratio is reversed. I know quite a few poor people too, and they ain't poor because poverty just fell into their laps out of the clear blue sky. I also know people who at one time or another were poor, but aren't anymore. The difference between the two demographics is more than just luck.

I know rich and poor people too. I don't generalise based on those experiences though, or I would think most rich people designed aprons.

Looking past personal anecdotes to verifiable stuff, we do know that things like losing manufacturing jobs to China creates higher unemployment in the US, which then increases poverty. This is neither luck nor is it something that

So, essentially you think exactly the way I described above.

If you wish to believe that, go ahead.

I said that people tend to become poor because a) they are born that way, b) had a run of bad luck (e.g. medical bankruptcy) or c) some other reason beyond their control (e.g. worldwide financial crisis).

However, I am pointing out that external factors (such as the nature of the global economy) that also affect poverty rates. It is not just about personal decisions. It is possible to have marketable skills, have made good economic decisions, and still be poor. This is particularly common for women and people of colour. Old people who may have lost their retirement savings in the recent financial crisis also fit into this category.

[Oakwood]

I don't know whether I would go as far as to call myself a conservative, but I really don't approve of most the people who call themselves "liberals" these days. Particularly in a country like Britain. They often talk of how tolerant they are of others' viewpoints and how open minded they are, when really they are like everyone else- discriminatory by custom. It's no coincidence that liberals will often hold very similar views to each other, praising the same groups as each other and harshly criticising the same groups as each other. It's the same for a conservative.

The idea of almost complete freedom to behave and be as you like is a complete joke of a fairy tale. Someone earlier mentioned "the social contract" which I think is relevant here. If you want protection from the government then you have no choice but to give up a great deal of your freedom in return for it. It's a necessity to maintain order. It's only when the government breaks its part of the deal by not protecting you that you have the right to start ignoring their laws and be more "free".

Whether the sort of liberals I'm talking about understand it or not, you are already controlled by a small number of people and its only through this that you can be secure. Total freedom basically equals anarchy.

But as for cannabis being legal, why not. It's not all that bad. I know it's a really common argument but the tax money on all kinds of drugs could be pretty useful in helping addicts recover rather than it being in the hands of the unscrupulous dealers who don't care at all about the people they are selling to.

[joyUnbounded]

I think there is a lot of over simplification here; certainly you have a very ideological definition of tyranny that seems to have been twisted more to suit what your opinions and views of Liberalism are.