The latest assault on men and boys: "Toxic Masculinity"

[opinterph]

@ Benvolio

I have answered you in a separate message.

---

To be fair, this thread’s opening post is somewhat void of substance. We are offered a link and 10 words of original commentary.

Tellingly, the Duke program is funded by a women's group.

“Tellingly” suggests a striking or revealing effect – something significant. We are offered the tease, but no explanation. In addition, the title of this thread suggests that the concept being explored is part of an ongoing “assault on men and boys.”

I see assumption paired with provocation. I conclude that the topic of this thread is somewhat vague at best – or a baiting thread at worst.

The only other advice offered by the original poster was, “it's crap like this that helped lead to Trump's election.” That seems to imply a correlation leading to an undesired outcome, but doesn’t make clear to what “crap like this” refers.

 

[rareboy]

I don't think you can understand the toxic masculinity stuff unless you see it as part of mandatory political correctness.

But why is a university course somehow part of mandatory political correctness?

Is it not also an entrenched form of political correctness that we all have had decades of having to not only accept but celebrate the worst of human male behaviours as social norms?

The answer, by the way, is yes.

University and college should be the environment for people to challenge ideas and one another...and perhaps the larger societal accepted views as well.

We get it. You and a lot of others don't want anyone to challenge the heteronormative white American male. You don't want any policies or even shift in social structures to inclusion for anyone who isn't a hetero white male. And that of course includes those who are actually closeted homosexuals.

Face it.

 

[Benvolio]

But why is a university course somehow part of mandatory political correctness?

Is it not also an entrenched form of political correctness that we all have had decades of having to not only accept but celebrate the worst of human male behaviours as social norms?

The answer, by the way, is yes.

University and college should be the environment for people to challenge ideas and one another...and perhaps the larger societal accepted views as well.

We get it. You and a lot of others don't want anyone to challenge the heteronormative white American male. You don't want any policies or even shift in social structures to inclusion for anyone who isn't a hetero white male. And that of course includes those who are actually closeted homosexuals.

Face it.

Anything I say would be regarded as a derailment.

 

[rareboy]

Anything I say would be regarded as a derailment.

Isn't it wonderfully convenient to claim that you can't respond to a point and remain on topic?

 

[Kulindahr]

As I said, it takes a libertarian to know one. You claim to be one but your solution to every problem is bigger government, more laws, more government control. Labeling me a propertarian, is the result of you own opposition to the freedoms to own property, one of the most basic freedoms.

No -- only someone who isn't paying attention here could say that. My solution to every manifestation of tyranny is checks and balances -- and sometimes those have to be done by government, at least until a way to do it through the free market is found.

The "freedom to own property", as it pertains to real estate, is a legal fiction designed to allow those who have dominance over the use of force to retain something they did not make, did not earn, and have no claim to except by force. More primitive cultures have been much wiser, recognizing that human beings cannot own the earth or any part of it. In terms of liberty, Henry George had it right: if there is any sort of right to own the earth, it must be held in common by all human beings.

 

[Kulindahr]

You offer mystery in the place of proof.

Only persons with a magic key can understand. Sounds rather patriarchal.

Right-Libertarianism [Wiki]​

Right-libertarianism rests at root on "might makes right", because it wants to uphold a societal structure dependent not on natural law, or on alleged Christian principles, or on any actual philosophical foundation beginning with self-ownership, but on seizing and holding what was not made, nor earned, but taken at the expense of others who did not have the capacity to seize and/or hold.

One cannot reach a right to own any portion of the surface of the earth from the fact of self-ownership. Either none can own any of it, or it is all owned in common -- and either way, to assert "property rights" in terms of real estate is theft. And theft is only lawful under "might makes right".

 

[Kulindahr]

Isn't it wonderfully convenient to claim that you can't respond to a point and remain on topic?

The problem is he has a set of lenses through which he sees everything, and those lenses only allow certain conclusions. That's how he manages to resort over and over to stereotypes with non foundation, and to conclude that anyone who isn't a propertarian fascist is a "socialist".

 

[Benvolio]

I reject the term right-libertarianism, because it implies that there can be such a thing as left wing libertarianism.
Any system requiring land to be held in common, would necessarily reduce individual human liberty. All economic activity would be controlled by some form of government. When economic liberty is lost the rest of liberty will follow.

 

[Kabluey]

I reject the term right-libertarianism, because it implies that there can be such a thing as left wing libertarianism.
Any system requiring land to be held in common, would necessarily reduce individual human liberty. All economic activity would be controlled by some form of government. When economic liberty is lost the rest of liberty will follow.

No one who demands control over other women's vaginas, believes in property rights over personal freedom, or who tries to limit the voting power of those with opposing views can be libertarian.

Ultra conservatives might like to label themselves libertarian, but that's no different from xenophobes who label themselves 'patriotic'.

They're just attaching acceptably PC labels to excuse their actual beliefs.

 

[Benvolio]

No one who demands control over other women's vaginas, believes in property rights over personal freedom, or who tries to limit the voting power of those with opposing views can be libertarian.

Ultra conservatives might like to label themselves libertarian, but that's no different from xenophobes who label themselves 'patriotic'.

They're just attaching acceptably PC labels to excuse their actual beliefs.

Libertarians oppose the federal government's unconstitutional usurpation of control of abortion, removing it from the democrat process,
we spport the freedom the children as well.
Property rights are a critical part of personal freedom. If govnment owns the land it conrols who farms it, who gets the benefit, how much, how each is paid, etc, etc. If property rights are lost, few rights will remain.
We do not limit voting rights. Requiring voter IDs is critical to protect voting rights. Votes of dead people, double voting, and votes by illegals nulify the votes of citizens entitled to vote and that is precisely whty democrats oppose IDs.

 

[Kulindahr]

Any system requiring land to be held in common, would necessarily reduce individual human liberty.

It would certainly increase human liberty over what it is now!

All economic activity would be controlled by some form of government. When economic liberty is lost the rest of liberty will follow.

Why does government have to be involved? and why would anyone control economic activity?

 

[Kulindahr]

Libertarians oppose the federal government's unconstitutional usurpation of control of abortion, removing it from the democrat process,
we spport the freedom the children as well.
Property rights are a critical part of personal freedom. If govnment owns the land it conrols who farms it, who gets the benefit, how much, how each is paid, etc, etc. If property rights are lost, few rights will remain.
We do not limit voting rights. Requiring voter IDs is critical to protect voting rights. Votes of dead people, double voting, and votes by illegals nulify the votes of citizens entitled to vote and that is precisely whty democrats oppose IDs.

Real estate "rights" don't exist: there is no right to take exclusively for one's own use something that was unmade and unearned. That is theft, by definition.

Theft is not liberty.



BTW, your repeated lie about democrats is noted; since it has been refuted before, no effort is necessary now.

 

[Benvolio]

Real estate "rights" don't exist: there is no right to take exclusively for one's own use something that was unmade and unearned. That is theft, by definition.

Theft is not liberty.
.

You think the fantasy in your mind defines what rights exist. How did you get to be the emperor of the universe? Land ownership and concomitant rights have existed since the first humans stopped hunting and settle on a piece of land. In the US our rights are determined by the democratic process. Many millions of land owners in the US disagree with your notion of "rights", and rights come from the law, they do not exist as a "brooding omnipresence in the sky," in the famous words of OWHolmes. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...xtJjK6F4m-3WR_CK3bYyUg&bvm=bv.144686652,d.amc

 

[Kulindahr]

You think the fantasy in your mind defines what rights exist. How did you get to be the emperor of the universe? Land ownership and concomitant rights have existed since the first humans stopped hunting and settle on a piece of land. In the US our rights are determined by the democratic process. Many millions of land owners in the US disagree with your notion of "rights", and rights come from the law, they do not exist as a "brooding omnipresence in the sky," in the famous words of OWHolmes. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...xtJjK6F4m-3WR_CK3bYyUg&bvm=bv.144686652,d.amc

No, rights do NOT "come from the law" -- that concept is 100% contrary to both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. It is a totally statist notion inherited from the idea of the "divine right" of kings, or from the notion that might makes right. It is a position that is utterly contrary to liberty.

Rights come from the fact of self-ownership. If they come from the law, that means they come from the state, which means we are property of the state. While that position may fit with monarchies and fascists, it has no place in a free country.

So there's no "fantasy" involved here, there's a pure libertarian position resting on the observable reality of self-ownership, which is the basis of all liberty.

As for those landowners, yes, their land rights come from the law, because they are artificial rights. And they are, under the current system, very weak rights, both because there is no logical foundation for them and because the government can take away your property to build a road, put up a sports stadium, or allow a development to line the pockets of a politician's friends (all uses approved by the federal courts).


BTW, rights in the U.S. are NOT "determined by the democratic process", they stand AGAINST the democratic process. Democracy knows nothing of rights, only of the will of the 50%+1 of those who bother to vote -- in other words, democracy is a polished-up version of might makes right. Rights are honored only in a republic, which is founded on the fact that "all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with... rights".

 

[TX-Beau]

No, rights do NOT "come from the law" -- that concept is 100% contrary to both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. It is a totally statist notion inherited from the idea of the "divine right" of kings, or from the notion that might makes right. It is a position that is utterly contrary to liberty.

Rights come from the fact of self-ownership. If they come from the law, that means they come from the state, which means we are property of the state. While that position may fit with monarchies and fascists, it has no place in a free country.

So there's no "fantasy" involved here, there's a pure libertarian position resting on the observable reality of self-ownership, which is the basis of all liberty.

As for those landowners, yes, their land rights come from the law, because they are artificial rights. And they are, under the current system, very weak rights, both because there is no logical foundation for them and because the government can take away your property to build a road, put up a sports stadium, or allow a development to line the pockets of a politician's friends (all uses approved by the federal courts).


BTW, rights in the U.S. are NOT "determined by the democratic process", they stand AGAINST the democratic process. Democracy knows nothing of rights, only of the will of the 50%+1 of those who bother to vote -- in other words, democracy is a polished-up version of might makes right. Rights are honored only in a republic, which is founded on the fact that "all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with... rights".

I agree, and so did the FF's that rights are inherent, yet it is also true that we can only exercise those rights that we can defend. Which is what makes people like Ben so poisonous. Because he doesn't want to defend any rights, he wants to defend ONLY his own prerogatives.

His ilk think there are no rights they don't agree with. Which, yes, is a component of Fascism.

 

[Kulindahr]

I agree, and so did the FF's that rights are inherent, yet it is also true that we can only exercise those rights that we can defend. Which is what makes people like Ben so poisonous. Because he doesn't want to defend any rights, he wants to defend ONLY his own prerogatives.

His ilk think there are no rights they don't agree with. Which, yes, is a component of Fascism.

To be fair, it's a component of any elitism, from fascism to feudalism to fanaticism.

In fact it's a big part of what corrupted Islam right in the generation after Mohammad: the elites he had stomped on grabbed power again and proceeded to lay down traditions reversing a lot of what their own Prophet had done. And it's what corrupted communism, for that matter, and what killed the Roman Republic.

It's well on the way to killing our Republic.

 

[opinterph]

… seizing and holding what was not made, nor earned, but taken at the expense of others who did not have the capacity to seize and/or hold.

As in natural resources, et al.?

 

[Kabluey]

You think the fantasy in your mind defines what rights exist. How did you get to be the emperor of the universe? Land ownership and concomitant rights have existed since the first humans stopped hunting and settle on a piece of land. In the US our rights are determined by the democratic process. Many millions of land owners in the US disagree with your notion of "rights", and rights come from the law, they do not exist as a "brooding omnipresence in the sky," in the famous words of OWHolmes. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwjlltG06NrRAhXk3YMKHVKfDR0QFgg7MAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikiquote.org%2Fwiki%2FOliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.&usg=AFQjCNEMOXrywBWAMMFFbKf8hDx0muUrWA&sig2=xtJjK6F4m-3WR_CK3bYyUg&bvm=bv.144686652,d.amc

Ben thinks feudalism trumps universal human rights.
Talk about 18th century thinking...

 

[Kulindahr]

As in natural resources, et al.?

Of course -- anything humans did not create cannot be claimed as property unless it is claimed in common by all.

What we should have is a foundation that holds all the property in the U.S. as a share corporation, in which every citizen gets two shares, non-transferable, and every legal resident non-citizen gets one, and every entity occupying land -- including the government -- has to pay rent on that land. The proceeds would be distributed to the shareholders quarterly.

Under such a system, all land owned by the current federal government that is not actually used for government functions would be transferred to said foundation, and anyone interested in extracting resources from those lands would have to bid for them on an open market exchange -- and those proceeds would also go to the shareholders.

I could go with national parks being exempted from this system, and some of the proceeds from the rents and fees going to support them.

Yes, this would probably require a constitutional amendment, but the owning of vast tracts of land by the federal government should also have required a constitutional amendment.

 

[Kulindahr]

Ben thinks feudalism trumps universal human rights.
Talk about 18th century thinking...

I think there's a great insight there: the current system of land possession really is just a form of feudalism.

The only rational system of land possession was that described by Henry George, where all is held in common and rented out; the current system could be switched over without anyone really noticing, except that the government would no longer be able to tax land as land, or the value of natural resources, as those would belong to the people, except perhaps for some state lands that could belong to the states.

What this would really do -- something Ben fails to see -- is actually put land 'ownership' on a free-market basis and take it completely out of the hands of the government, so that the government could no longer act arbitrarily to mess with land use rights; those rights would belong to the whole of the people, thus superseding the government, and assigned by title which the government wouldn't be able to just take away for the benefit of developers.