We Can Work It Out - Politics & Philosophy | Page 86 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Should people with disabilities be allowed to serve in the military?

This is a tough one for me. On one hand, i strongly support freedom and equality for all and i really hate how the military is excluded from ensuring equal treatment for people with disabilities. On the other hand, allowing people with disabilities to serve in the military could lead to a bunch of soldiers incapable of doing their jobs.

The best option would probably be to allow them in, but only place them in roles where their disability wouldn’t work against them.

What’s more libertarian, allowing big businesses to do as they please or forcing big businesses to treat everyone fairly and equally?

On the right hand, businesses have the right to discriminate against anyone they please and they’re allowed to treat their employees/customers as poorly as they like.

On the left hand, businesses no longer have the freedom to decide how they treat their employees/customers and they must comply to government standards.

Dark Overlord said

QuarryMan said

In regards to DO’s option, the option of letting them do what they want is libertarian for the business owners, and not for everybody else. This is my central issue with the bastardised American version of libertarianism.  

I think the problem is that while the founding fathers supported free speech, a traditionally left wing value, they also supported free market capitalism, a traditionally right wing value. In most countries, the libertarians/liberals lean more towards anarcho-socialism than anarcho-capitalism like American libertarians/liberals do.

The problem is that the left and right wing values of the late 1700s aren’t really comparable to how we see it now. Up until the twentieth century, in most ‘Western’ countries the ‘right’ meant the reactionary monarchies and their supporters, whereas the ‘left’ was the pro-democracy side. However, this traditional conflict was upset by two main trends: the spread and gradual acceptance of democracy as a form of government, and the gradual replacement of feudalism by capitalism as a form of economic system. This meant that the old ruling class (i.e. the monarchs and nobility) faded away as both a political and economic force, replaced by a new ruling class of ultra-rich businessmen and politicians. Similarly, the left went from those like the Founding Fathers who introduced constitutional democracies to those campaigning against the existence of capitalism. The result of this is that the main debate went from being democracy vs aristocracy to capitalism vs other systems.

TL;DR the main groups we now consider to embody the right and left have changed drastically since the US was founded, so comparisons of them don’t tend to make much sense anymore. 

BeatOfTheBrass said
It’s the same thing with why (most) modern music sucks: A spoiled, Ritalin-fried, self-entitled generation…spawned from a bunch of drunk, perverted, blob parents capable of no individual thought whatsoever.  These people have NO SOUL nor maturity (contrary to their alleged $150,000 university “education”…another gentrific-created useless fraud of the 20th-century corrupted by the ego of Middle Class status seeking) to feel how to create something organic of their OWN experience and view of life.

I think there’s a much simpler answer, technology is advancing to a point where real musicians and real talent are no longer needed. If you know how to operate a computer, you can top the Billboard charts.

I think the current European situation regarding the anti-Brexit view is even a more insane example of bureaucratic dependancy gone wild.  Why would a Briton, for instance, remotely allow somebody -a stranger, a politician…a thousand miles away- to equate THEIR sense of pride in Country to: something being (bizarrely) “on-par with” and as twisted as the death machine of WW2 Nazi Germany(!)?  Anybody in a political office that would be THAT stupid to dare even make a career out of such charlatan rhetoric should be slapped silly and laughed-off the face of the earth…no matter how much such a political figure would always be selling the public how “they wouldn’t hurt the wings of -the proverbial- fly”.  What(?): the E.U. doesn’t think anyone is smart enough to remember history and, realize the U.K. was actually the last bastion of freedom against the death march of Hitler and all those gutless cowards on the Continent that just rolled-over for him during WW2…or(?): know that the E.U. just evolved out of the old Common Market member nation TRADE GROUP (and: *didn’t* magically come about with the expressed purpose of making Europe a “warm and fuzzy place”…even for a mindset of outsiders over the past three decades whom, increasingly, have demonstrated -in all THEIR INTOLERABLE provincial unassimilation- to precisely try “out-doing” Hitler’s bigoted paranoias!).

No offence but Britain was never the face of freedom:

Back in the old days, Britain was an absolute monarchy who had free reign to treat his people as he pleases. If you dared criticize the king, he could have you publicly tortured and beheaded. On top of that, the living conditions were terrible, with problems with plagues and raw sewage. And then there’s the desire to raid foreign land and deport prisoners to said land and nearly destroying the indigenous population. Even with them as the driving force against Hitler, the only reason they won is because they had America to help them. It might seem crazy but before the attack on Pearl Harbor, many prominent American businesses such as Ford and IBM actually sided with the Nazis.

50yearslate said
I don’t think accusing liberals of not having souls is a particularly valid argument, but hey, what do I know? Oh, and thank you @BeatOfTheBrass for insulting two entire generations all at once with baseless and rude statements don’t you just love when people get in that Christmas spirit 

*Tries to resist temptation to just ok boomer them*

I think one of the best things Britain ever did was become a place of education, philosophy, art, science and culture. As Wigwam said, many of the most treasured values held around the world can trace themselves back to Britain. It’s important to have a discussion which recognises both the great things Britain has provided the world, and the damage it’s done. If we only focus on one, we’ll have an incomplete history. 

Still, a couple of criticisms: 

The freedoms enshrined in the American Constitution derive directly from Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights which served as its template. 

Sadly, the case with a lot of things like this is that although the values/ideas themselves hail from Britain, we didn’t always embody them. Even though they came from Locke and can be traced back to Magna Carta, the freedoms in the American Constitution were obviously not present in colonial America, since…. you know… they fought a war to gain them. 

As for Hitler? the UK and it’s Empire stood alone against the Nazis for a year. The entry of the US and Russia were decisive in the end.

Agree with you here. A Britain united against fascism was probably our greatest moment. 

As for plagues and raw-sewage in the streets, I’ve read about that in the history books…..If you want to see it theses days go to a liberal city like San Francisco.

Dangerous game to play for a conservative, considering how in 2018 eighteen out of the nineteen poorest states in the USA had legislatures where both chambers were controlled by Republicans. The five richest states (Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Connecticut) had legislatures where both chambers are controlled by Democrats. Not sure whether those figures have changed since the midterms, admittedly, but there you go. *

*Note that I’m not necessarily endorsing the mainstream Democratic Party, my allegiance is definitely with the Justice Democrats like Sanders rather than with neolibs like Pelosi, Clinton and Biden.