Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
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User ID: 290
The principle “usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority” has a big exclusion for “unless it prevents genocide”.
The exception is more 'unless a group has been repeatedly been persecuted by many other groups, to a degree greatly above background, and given no refuge when they tried to escape a mad-man bent on their extermination.'
Just a cursory look through the annals of history shows that every group which lacks dominance over a territory risks genocide, and that these happen at mostly unpredictable times. Therefore, it is justifiable to take coercive measures to keep an ethnic group in the majority of some territory (or subsection thereof) to prevent its genocide, as this is the best way to protect against genocide.
But this is not an argument for why other groups should not get a homeland. Shouldn’t our interest be in reducing genocides down to 0%?
Such a plan would be very destructive to human freedom and well-being; furthermore, even if it had been accomplished fifty years ago and every ethnic group had their own country, the division between ethnicities is not a constant throughout history.
Therefore, to prevent genocides from occurring, the best method is to
- establish a principle that members of ethnic minorities ought to be treated as equals, and that the relevant subject of moral/ethical concern is not 'a group of people defined by distant¹ blood-relation' but 'an individual human being', and
- establish that if an individual is at risk of being murdered by the country they live in because their neighbours have decided that their ethnic group are undeserving of life, other countries ought to let them in.
Once this has been accomplished, and the ideas that 'an individual is less worthy of concern because they are of a different ethnicity' or 'we have the right to send an individual back to a country where they will be murdered rather than risk them causing some inconvenience² to us' are taken no more seriously anywhere among the Nations than the idea that '2.00 + 2.00 = 5.00', then we can discuss whether the State of Israel is justified in limiting the number of Arab citizens to less than the number of Jewish citizens.
¹'Distant' meaning 'far enough apart that even the Medieval Church wouldn't object to them marrying.'
²Such as 'they're poor enough that they might cost us money in social support', 'letting in 10,000 of them might contain one or two people who might wish us harm³', or 'we can't distinguish which ones are in actual danger, so avoiding type II errors (deporting someone who will then be murdered) will cause type I errors (some people might move here for economic opportunity, even if we have told them not to!).
³During the interbellum period, some Unitedstatesian opinionists opposed the admission of Jewish refugees on the grounds that Germany might hide saboteurs among them.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
4d ago
The biggest flaw in the JCPOA was that the restrictions on uranium enrichment, intended to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, expired at T+10-15 years, thus potentially allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear arsenal 'later' rather than 'never'.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
4d ago
I don’t think it follows that other groups should be prevented from such a state.
That follows from the principle of "Ethnonationalism Considered Harmful" leading to the notion that, usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority.
The list of genocides in history is long and the subjects are totally random.
Not totally random. Some groups have been dis-proportionally targeted; this pattern becomes more visible with a data-set that includes sub-genocidal persecution.
It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided.
No, because not every group has the same risk.
It’s unreasonable to say, “because this group has already been subject to genocide, they should have an eternal homeland”
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "Because this group has been subjected repeatedly to genocidal and lesser persecutions, and were turned away and sent to their deaths when they tried to flee the most recent attempt, they should have a homeland as long as there is widespread animus against them and government control over immigration."
If the passengers on the MS St. Louis, and all the other Jewish people fleeing the Nazis, had been allowed into America, there would have been a lot less impetus for the formation of a Jewish State.
If all other countries had open borders, showed no sign of any desire to change this, and that situation continued for several decades, it would be reasonable to urge Israel to follow suit.
(Often cast is the accusation of wanting 'open borders for every country except Israel'. I think a better description, at least of those whose political opinions reside on Level 1, would be open borders for every country, with Israel bringing up the tail end of the process. [Those on Level 3, on the other hand, {if their social circle consists of the kind of people in the Respectable Media} will oppose immigration enforcement in the U. S. because their friends do, support Israeli policies because their friends do, and give no more regard to resolving any apparent contradiction in their ideas than they would give to ensuring that their ideas are expressed in sentences ending in words with an odd number of letters. {The same applies to people whose social circle consists of college radicals yelling "From the river to the sea" without any knowledge of the bodies of water to which that slogan refers.}])
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
4d ago
do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? ... Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future ....
In 1900, would anyone have thought the Shoah would have been started by Germany?
If you brought someone forward from that era, told them that there would be a persecution and mass murder of Jews on an un-precedented scale, and asked them to guess what country it would come from, I suspect most people' first guess would be Russia, possibly followed by France.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
how oppressed they’ve been
It's not 'how oppressed they've been', per se, so much as 'how likely are they to be oppressed in the future'.
The former is largely relevant as evidence of the latter.
I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine
This would be reasonable if there were a danger, supported by historical precedent, of your ethnic group, if a minority in every country, being declared unwelcome in your country of residence, denied admission to other countries, and then targeted for mass murder. (I don't know what ethnicity you are, so I cannot say for certain that that is not the case. If it is, than your group would also be justified in wanting its own country in which it is the majority. 'White people', on the other hand, do not fit this criterion; if that were to change, then you would have an argument for wanting to live in a white-majority country.)
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
There is a difference between supporting Zionism because "we'd rather stay here, but just in case they decide they don't want us here..." and supporting Zionism because "the normal purpose of a country is as a home for a specific ethnic group; we were born with an un-changeable primary duty towards our group's homeland."
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
The Right Wing shouldn't support a people that don't support them
Many Jewish people do support the right wing, at least the more idea-focused parts. More might have done so if they didn't get the impression (whether accurate or not) that "You support us, we'll support you" meant something along the lines of "You obey and agree with us in every way, and we'll grudgingly let you live in the crappiest parts of our land instead of leaving you to be slaughtered, as long as you acknowledge us as your superiors."
Also, not everything ought to be transactional. Sometimes, one should help people not because they have done or will do something for you, but because it is the right thing to do.
Jews are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel.
Sympathy is not the same as loyalty. Many Jewish American citizens have sympathy towards Israel, because they have relatives there whom they know personally, and because they need there to be a place where they are allowed to exist even if every Gentile doesn't want them.
(Also, some people complain that Jewish U. S. citizens don't have enough loyalty to Israel.)
If accepting them
Grudgingly, when at all.
and handing them power
The Jewish people were not 'handed power' as a group. They were, in fact, often systematically kept away from power.
failed to earn their loyalty to the ethnic stock
Or don't consider an 'ethnic stock' to be a thing one can be loyal to.
you should wonder why they were expelled so much throughout history
My hypothesis is that a religion founded on arguing with G-d, and which has a big book consisting of centuries of arguments by its clergy over every minute detail of Scripture, is likely to be inconvenient for any person or group whose agenda relies on being able to say that black 0.4–0.7 μm albedo < 0.01 is white 0.4–0.7 μm albedo > 0.99 and have everybody reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears. This would explain the rise of anti-Semitism among the wokists SJWs PJFTMWTIAATUftSSaPCYDs.
However, I don't think it matters why they were not welcomed. What matters is that millions of human beings, each with hopes, dreams, feelings, people they loved, eyes, hands, organs, senses, dimensions, were denied a safe place to live, and sent back to be slaughtered.
That is why Jewish people are justifiably not confident that they are safe if they are a minority in every country; the same logic does not apply to white people.
The US took in the Jews
Except for the ones on the MS St Louis.
and didn't treat them as second-class citizens
Except when they did.
but apparently that didn't earn the US any claim to maintain a White population in your mind?
No. You're not supposed to treat people as second-class citizens, just like you're supposed to take care of your children and not end up in gaol.
Furthermore, even if white Americans had shown supererogatory virtue, that would still not entitle them to an ethnic majority, because, in the general case, 'being entitled to an ethnic majority' isn't a thing. We make an exception in the case of Israel and the Jewish people due to their long history of being regularly persecuted, combined with the post-WWI implementation of modern border controls. (If I had a magic 'open borders, for everyone except horrifying predatory criminals [judged on an individual basis], in every country including Israel, I would at least be tempted to press it, knowing that Jewish people facing anti-Semitic persecution would always be able to leave any country which persecuted them. However, in a world in which countries claim a general right to refuse entry for any or no reason, it is anti-Semitic to expect Jewish people to bet their lives on the hope that the Nations will be feeling generous.)
It certainly failed to earn the ethnic loyalty of Jews to White Americans.
Ethnic loyalty? No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel! Jewish Americans sympathetic to civic nationalism show loyalty to American ideals such as the Constitution.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
This is only coherent if you set the clock at a completely arbitrary cutoff
Only semi-arbitrary. We cut it off post-WWII because that's when we realised that the seizure of territory by force of arms was increasingly damaging, and thus could not be allowed to continue in the future. Thus we set the cut-off at 'now' as a Schelling point, because we had to set it somewhere, and 'now' was the least disruptive.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
As the old line goes, the socialists will never forgive the Jews for surviving the Holocaust.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
That comparison might make more sense if white people had been a minority in every country for c. 2,000 years, been treated as second-class citizens when tolerated, expelled whenever the majority needed a scapegoat, and then subjected to attempted extermination with everyone prescient enough to try to escape refused entry by every country they tried to flee to.
Unless and until that happens, I see no contradiction in asserting that Jewish people are entitled to a state in which they are a majority, while white people are not.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
You can say, as a matter of principle, that no ethnostate should exist.
The problem is that it practically seems to end up as "Israel in particular should dissolve itself first". People find that suspicious.
I believe that Israel might very well be the only justified ethno-state; every invocation of '109 countries' by certain political tendencies only serves to strengthen that conviction.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
What about the position that it’s perfectly fine and dandy for the Jews to have somewhere they can exist, but that it should be somewhere other than the Levant?
That would not necessarily be anti-Semitic, if it were argued in good faith, and the proposal involved the alternate Jewish homeland being an independent state, with a Jewish majority, and whichever country it was carved out of renouncing all claim to the territory.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
5d ago
In my view, someone boycotting Israel could, theoretically not be anti-Semitic, but I don't know of any organised movement that qualifies.
For such a movement to demonstrate not being anti-Semites, they would need to state conditions XYZ, such that:
- Israel could fulfil XYZ without jeopardising its existence, and
- the movement declares that, if Israel fulfils XYZ, they will end the boycott.
However, doing this would lose the support of those who oppose Israel not out of sympathy for Palestinian children but anger that the Jews have somewhere where they can exist without the permission of the Nations.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
7d ago
The only case I can see is a relative one - people opposed to liberal views aren't banned as much anymore, and that's a disadvantage compared to what they have.
"When one is accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
7d ago
Point remains if a parent makes a mistake they'll usually by wrecked with guilt
I'm not talking about mistakes but conflicts of interests; 'parent has ideology with which child does not agree, makes decision based on that ideology, causes suffering to child, refuses to consider that they may have been wrong.'
So it just so happens that this blog post was talking about the exact same drug
That'll larn me to skim the article -- I thought they were talking about surgery!
In the case of puberty blockers, I would only intervene insofar as to ensure that the child and parents had at least heard the counterargument to their proposal; I could see applying the same argument to gender transition.
If you want to live in platonic / marxist utopia where all children belong to the state
Again, children aren't property. Not belonging to their parents doesn't mean that they must belong to someone else, it means that they belong to themselves; whatever authority we give to parents starts from zero even if it doesn't stay there.
If you actually believed that this means parents have no authority over their children, you'd be quoting Rousseau, not the American founding fathers.
I was quoting the Declaration as opposition to the divine right of kings.
"As above, so below" was the extrapolation to the divine right of parents.
Yes, that's my point. If you were advocating pure libertarianism, I could consider your idea of removing all authority from parents, and ensuring the child's autonomy. But since you don't, the idea is completely absurd to me.
The idea of something between 'pure libertarianism' and 'status quo' is absurd to you?
If parents have no authority over their children, than an adult has even less authority over another unrelated adult.
A having authority over Bs personal decisions is not the same thing as A having authority over B's authority over C. A parent has every right to forbid their child from making unreasonable demands of their younger sibling.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
8d ago
It is a bit odd how worried people are about credentials.
"Remember, a lone amateur built the Ark. A whole team of professionals built the Titanic."
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
8d ago
It's also performative because most of these ladies are not actually going to swear off men, because they like sex, attention, and validation. Political lesbianism and lesbian separatism largely failed as a movement because women found out that they can't just decide to be not attracted to men, any more than men can just stop wanting women.
This is exactly the same as the MGTOW movement, who are just as much a gang of performative blowhards who'd crawl over broken glass to actually score, but talk a big game online about how they don't need no woman. They don't care. They so don't care. Can you see how loudly and obnoxiously and convincingly they are not caring?
"No one will ever win the battle of the sexes, because there's too much fraternising with the enemy."
Not directly, but usually parents go through suffering of their own when something bad happens to their children.
That's not the same thing.
And we give it to parents because we expect them to make the decision the child would have, if they were mature.
But often they don't make the same decision their child would have if mature. Many parents attempt to override their child's decisions even after their child is mature.
So in a case like this, if the parents managed to convince the child that this treatment will help, would you say the state has no right to intervene?
No, I think that clears the higher bar.
On the other hand, if a child, upon finding out that meat is made out of dead animals, desires to adopt a plant-only diet, and their parents approve, I would not override their decision, even though many non-Adventist-influenced experts doubt that it is wise.
personally I'd say they have that authority by default, and you need a strong positive argument if you want to take it away.
They said the same thing about kings once....
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ... that to secure these rights, governments are instituted ... that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it....
As above, so below.
libertarian utopia where parents decide for themselves
But they aren't deciding for themselves! They are deciding for another person! In the purest form of libertarianism, the child would decide everything for themselves.
I am not advocating for pure libertarianism, but that is what I mean by 'your children aren't your property.' The base state isn't parents having absolute power over their children, it's them having no authority whatsoever. All power accorded to parents is a creation of society.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
8d ago
Generally we allow people to refuse treatment, even if that will have negative consequences for them.
When an adult refuses medical care for themselves, the negative consequences fall on the person making the decision. When an adult refuses medical care for a child, the adult does not experience those consequences.
We also generally recognize children lack the maturity to make long-term decisions, so we grant the power to make medical decisions about them to their parents (or whoever has custody of them).
And there are many examples of that going wrong, usually from parents who think of their children as their property and refuse to distinguish between 'my child's long-term interest/coherent extrapolated volition' and 'my personal preferences/non-universal ideology'.
Even with adults, if someone is unconscious, it's their next of kin that generally make medical decisions for them, not the doctors. None of that implies owning another person as property.
Because the next of kin is expected to make the decision based on 'what the patient would decide if conscious' and not 'what the next of kin wants'.
Also how consistent are you with "rightness" overruling parental authority[?] If the evidence for pediatric transgender care is determined to be very poor, are you ok with a blanket ban on transgender care, even if the child, parents, and a bunch [of] their doctor[s] agree that it's right?
- Overruling parents in the case of 'parents and child agree; we think both are wrong' should be a higher bar to clear than 'parents disagree with child; we think child is right and parents are wrong.'
- The case for giving any authority to parents rests on the assumption that they are usually right, for a value of 'right' that can be falsified, i. e. not defined as right a priori by dint of their status as parents. In cases where parents are often wrong, I believe society currently gives them too much unchallenged authority, and there need to be more checks and balances.
- What do you mean by 'the evidence for paediatric transgender care is determined to be very poor'? A literal reading would be 'the evidence seems to support it, but we have low confidence in that assertion.' akin to the evidence for ivermectin vs. COVID-19, or aducanumab vs. Alzheimer's disease. In that case, where we cannot predict long-term effects, we should do what results in the least immediate suffering. If you meant 'the evidence shows with strong confidence that it is harmful', akin to the evidence regarding 31 g of aspirin vs. the 1918 influenza, then I could be convinced to support a moratorium until experiments on adults show that they have found a less harmful method of changing genders.
- 'Blocking transgender care that is desired by a minor patient and approved by both parents and doctors' is not the mirror image of 'allowing transgender care that is desired by a minor patient and approved by doctors but opposed by the patient's parents'; the mirror image of that is 'blocking transgender care that is desired by the parent(s) but opposed by the patient and the doctors.' e. g. the often raised spectre of the blue-hair-and-pronouns parent attempting to transition their cisgender child in order to gain the status of 'ally to the trans community'. (I am not sure whether this has ever happened, but it would certainly justify overruling the parent's wishes, even in a society in which gender transition is instant, perfect, side-effect-free, and reversible.)
The groomer most likely believes that having sex with the child is mutually beneficial and while it serves his own interests, also serves the best interests of the child.
But he/she is wrong.
There is no royal road to geometry, and there is no substitute to actually deciding who is right and who is wrong in each individual case.
(Sometimes, we can establish heuristics where >99.999% of cases following a given pattern have a common answer; e. g. "Anyone advocating for paedophilia is wrong." However, the heuristic "If a parent disagrees with their child, the parent is right and the child is wrong." does not reach anywhere near five nines.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
8d ago
on what grounds you wish to overrule parental authority
On the grounds that a child or adolescent is not the property of their parents, because they are a human being, and a human being cannot be the property of another human being (Grant v. Lee, 1865).
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
9d ago
we should not let these kind of doctors make decisions about children, that go against the wishes of parents.
What if the parents are wrong?
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
9d ago
It is impossible for a [natal-anatomical] man to give birth.
Impossible with today's medical technology. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
It should be. The appropriate response to opinions with which you dis-agree is to argue against them, not bully their advocates into silence or recantation.
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