hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu writes:
No one would ever accuse you of supporting freedom, Phill. I'm sure it was an accident.
Actually I have been very active in circles like Liberty (the UK version of the ACLU). Its just that we have entirely different ideas of what liberty is. Perry believes that libery is license and I believe in the utilitarian formulation of Liberty as advanced by Mill, Russell et al.
You don't believe in Mill's formulation, Phill. If you did, you couldn't possibly support 90% of the garbage you talk about. Mill was a libertarian in the modern sense -- he opposed virtually everything government did. Yes, his opposition was utilitarian, but so what? You use utilitarianism to justify the indefensible. You say I think that my idea of freedom is license. Perhaps. However, I think my notion is closer to the common conception than yours, which owes more to Orwellian redefinition than to the normal use of the term.
Of course if Perry was interested in genuine liberty instead of a slave owner's idea of liberty
Again, that is ad hominem. You say that ad hominem's are fine when one is questioning a speaker's credentials, but the point is that Jefferson's credentials are immaterial. You call him a slave owner as in order to try to taint his ideas. However, ideas cannot be tainted. If Adolf Hitler felt that high speed autobahns were a good idea, that doesn't make highways a bad idea simply because of the person who conceived of them. Jefferson could have been a mass murderer for all I care. His words may be evaluated fully independently of his actions. They are not interdependent. Perry