Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies"
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 1 month agoOne of the arguments I’m making is that people should be allowed to believe what they want.
The proposition that freedom of thought & conscience are inherent human liberties (ie, that everyone “should be allowed”) flows directly from liberal philosophy. Liberal philosophy holds that governments exist for the people, their authority is legitimate only when they protect inherent human rights, and until they do, the people have a right & duty to reform and replace their government. So, you agree with this?
Authoritarianism doesn’t.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Those are two or more separate concepts (freedom of thought vs. the government being for the people) and don’t necessarily have to go together.
Also, authoritarianism occurs in a spectrum. Most of the countries that Westerners accuse of being authoritarian are only partially so, and only in certain aspects. On the other hand, there are legitimate arguments to be made that many Western powers are also partially authoritarian. So then the argument becomes about how much authoritarianism is acceptable. I think that this is too deep of a philosophical discussion to have in an online forum. At least I wouldn’t have the patience or energy to stick with it.