ISIS and the Destruction of Antiquities

I understand biology but a policy of collectivism shouldn't be argued from it.

 

A *reality* of collectivism.

 

But you're making the connection to forced Collectivism. Free people have the right to freedom of association and can pick and choose with how they interact with society as long as they don't harm another or their property

 

Somewhat agree. I'm all about freedom. I am against pretending we are all sovereign citizens.

 

You can't have freedom without that though. In your principles it'd be easy to take rights and give to collective since you believe man can't be and end to themselves.

 

I don't think that is the only interpretation at all.

You can have a society that has the utmost protection for the individual and his properties, and still acknowledge that no man can do anything completely autonomously, that he is by his very existence a part of a greater whole.

That doesn't mean we need to live in Plato's Republic or some Communal ant farm.

 

But they're still the rights of the collective and can be taken by the majority at their will. That's mob rule and not freedom even if they're generous

 

I think we are talking past each other, I am afraid. It is a fact, cold hard and irrefutable, that we live interconnected with one another. I don't generate my electricity, I don't clean my water, I didn't make the computer that I am typing this on. I didn't raise myself, I didn't wipe my own poop when I was one, I didn't teach myself English or mathematics. Everything I do affects those around me, and then that affects everyone around them, etc, etc.

Yes, we have your rights, and no one should take them away from us, but that doesn't mean that we do not live as a big group on this little tiny planet we are stuck on. I think it is a leap to say acknowledging this means that anyone can take your rights away (though given enough force, of course they can, that has happened countless times in history).

 

You're bending what I'm saying. I'm not arguing we're not social creatures that operate in isolation. I'm saying that society shouldn't be the decider of rights and individual rights should be protected.

Once you start putting society over the individual, you can start allowing horrible injustices

 

I don't think anyone is doing that. We are a product of our various societies. We are molded and shaped by them. I don't think they can be completely divorced. I mean, growing up in a nation founded on freedom surely has shaped your views on the subject.

 

And I am not arguing that State/Society > Individual, hence why I think we are talking past one another!

I do think a good and informed citizen, however, understands we are all in this together and acts accordingly of his own free will.

 

ISIS is not only destroying antiquities but making a killing by selling them on the black market. Since the revolution in Egypt, looters have ravaged the land in search of antiquities. It's crazy the lengths they'll go through, some holes they work at for years. There are piles of bones from mummies just laying around in certain spots.

 

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

 

Love the irony.

 

It is like the huge, HUGE poppy farms in Afghanistan and Turkey.