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Originally Posted by Thane
They don't start out conservative necessarily. They start out strong and UNIFIED. Unified in purposes and beleifs. Purposes and beliefs about how the citenry can best behave to maintain a strong and unified society and population. Liberalism has very much divided our population today. Powerful organizations like the ACLU have played mindgames with an easily influenced population and added to this division. One of the mindgame strategies they use is blaming their OPPONENTS for the division they have caused. They blame the religious as they wage WAR on anybody with any religious beleifs. They blame religion as they tear any religious statement or sentiments out of our society and culture. They can influence the lazy or simple minded and be seen as HEROES as they do this. Liberalism in our education system has made a business of rewriting and omitting history from history books. Through lies and mindgames they influence and weaken opposition. Further dividing us and weakening our NATION.
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I bolded the part that interests me and is relevant (IMO) to this thread. The rest seems like a partisan rant, which is, at best, tangentially relevant and overly specific to current political attitudes in the US (thus crippling any real impact on the discussion).
It seems to me that you are saying that nation states are often forged out of a desire for specific changes, and with a spirit of strong agreement among the founders as to what principles should provide the basis for that society. It then seems to me that you are arguing that deviance from these goals is what leads to the downfall of said societies. Is this correct?
Would you say that this is broadly applicable, not just to the US, but also to other nations born in revolution (or colonization) such as Soviet Russia? Did the USSR fall apart because it deviated too heavily from the original ideals?
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Not necessarily the best from an ETHICAL standpoint. The most coherent though. Coherent in that they haven't begun the process of self destruction from the inside OUT yet. Maybe ethics will improve as time passes. This is limited by the animal nature that is still PART of humanity. Ethics may improve for a time from a starting point. Improvement will degrade due to "human nature" though and turn to degeneracy. I don't think there is one single instance this has not been demonstrated historically.
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So, do you believe that the course of human history is comprised of little "bursts" of greatness (revolutions to form nation states) followed by long periods of slow decline, which set the stage for the next "burst"?
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I was raised to believe very little actually. I hold my "ethics" because they're logical. Many today wouldn't SEE them as logical because they've been fed garbage and bought into and BELEIVED the garage they've been FED. You can see many examples of what I'm talking about right here on this forum.
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The first two sentences intrigued me because I was curious as to how you would defend your ethics from a logical standpoint, but then you dropped the ball with a blanket ad hominem asserting that people only disagree with your opinions because they've "been fed garbage". You might as well have said "My ethics are logical because if you don't share them you're a poo-poo head."