In order to "keep on" advancing rationality and freedom we would first have to start advancing rationality and freedom. Both are in short supply.
I don't see that in the GP. It looks to me that he's working from the observation that personal liberty is decreasing, presumably revealing that the decisions being made are not rational. In particular, there's no reason to read into this anything about scope ("everyone"), nor their intent (to restrict freedom).
Clearly it would be incorrect to impute this to everyone when the restricted liberty can only be caused by the few in power.
Also, it may not be their intent to restrict freedom. Indeed, their intent may be to save our freedom, but due to the observed lack of rationality, their efforts carry the (assumedly unintended) side effect of restricting freedom.
I would add to it, that "advancing freedom" is one of those phrases that is, when you examine it, quite poorly defined. Freedom is more a set of associations than a strict definition, though I'm sure one can find philosophers who have attempted to strictly define it, so you get "freedom sub Professor X". Freedom is much easier to talk about in the abstract than to define, and lends itself to pithy (or, less charitably, glib) phrases that can be twisted to whatever one's own definition of freedom is.
My original post was flippant and lacking in nuance, to be sure (still not warranting the personal attack; I do, in fact, attempt to point out logical fallacies and bring about reasonable discourse). I am not immune to making the odd sound-bite myself, though calling my post cynical and then making a strawman attack also does not advance the cause of rationality.
I agree, which is why I instead used the term "liberty" in some places. While the term "freedom" has in modern times become clouded particularly with the notion of "positive" freedoms, I believe that the term "liberty" tends to be more strongly associated with the more traditional notions of "negative" liberty.
But I must concede that even this difference is at the grossest level, and there remain much more nuanced differences in definition beyond the negative/positive distinction.
It's sad and frustrating to realize that we, too, are human! and so must constantly self-check on these sorts of things. While the word "community" gets over-used, I think that's part of what community can do.
Or perhaps: civilization.
Thanks for the gut-check.
The worst evils of the 20th century were done by people with lots of scientific, industrial and psychological knowledge propping them up. And the worst evils of the 21st century will be no different.
OK, find me a duel and a bear-baiting match in America and I'll believe you. Otherwise you're just mindlessly cynical, like any number of other teenagers.
You're probably right about bear-baiting. But there is plenty of organized dog fights and cock-fights around.
As for your link, an anecdote does not data make. If you want to argue that our society is getting more violent you need to prove that the amount of violent episodes now is higher than in the past, not that there happen violent events now. And as a matter of fact, overall in most of the Western world, the amount of violent crimes has been on a steady decline for the last 50 years at least (the amount of other crimes has gone down too, by the way).
No, there is quite some evidence behind that idea[1].
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
Maybe you should study some recent history. The list goes on an on.
Oh yes, original sin. Wonderful. That makes sense. Can I buy some plenary indulgence from you, or is it a 'salvation by grace' thing now?
> They are representative of the state of the world in that we still allow them to go on.
The world once allowed the Black Plague and religions based on human sacrifice to 'go on', as you say. Darfur and North Korea are nothing compared to those.
Compare that to WWII: "Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilian"
Looking at North Korea and Iraq, every single person in those countries could die and that still wouldn't exceed the body count from WWII, not to mention WWI or any of the truly pointless European conflicts before that.
Even comparing Iraq to Vietnam, do you know what that war did to that country? Millions and millions of civilians were killed, an order of magnitude worse than even the extreme estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths.
Forced labor worldwide? Slavery was legal in the US 150 years ago. Now it is not -- in fact, we just elected a black president.
You said: "Have you seen any witches burned recently? Have 100K Japanese people on the west coast been put into camps recently?"
And my response was to indicate that tragedies like those are still happening in modern times, for very much the same reasons.
"Forced labor worldwide? Slavery was legal in the US 150 years ago. Now it is not -- in fact, we just elected a black president."
You response seems to have little to do with my point. Forced labor is a worldwide problem. Reciting US history to me does little to discredit that. I'd like to know what Obama has done recently to stop the sex trafficking of girls from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia.
Actually, it was built by the Department of Defense, aka The War Department. The freedom aspect was purely unintentional.
Indeed, I suppose that the reason that the best way to make the network robust results in making it free, creates an interesting analogy to the original point. At the very least, it proves that it's possible to be both more free and more secure, simultaneously.