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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Pi wrote: | ^
Prohibition ,The war on drugs, Nazism and Communism , all promised a new
age of productivity and safety for all.
It was all going to work perfectly but only if everyone just rigidly adhered to what ever the ideology is (absolutism). The actual ideology itself really doesn't matter,
They all required and justified draconian measures to achieve their utopian objectives (however they defined them).
If Malaysian and Singaporean drug laws have been successful or at best effective why has drug use increased?
http://www.christopherteh.com/blog/2015/03/drugs/ |
Your article shows one single year of increased arrests in Malaysia in 2013. That could signify many things. What is true is that Singapore and Malaysia have some of the lowest rates of drug use in the world, according to WHO statistics. It’s reasonable to argue that the way they achieve that is too draconian, but their strategy is hardly making things worse relative to the objective.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Do you think I should know that? |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | TBH, unless someone can provide a good working definition of what utopianism actually means, it just sounds like you're each just selectively picking and choosing things you don't like and assigning a 'utopian' label to them. It seems pretty clear to me that America, as its founding fathers envisioned it, was a deeply utopian project, if the term has any meaning at all. |
Utopianism can indeed mean many things. I used the term first in this thread to signify the adoption of an ideal or desired state, substantially independent of human nature, and then use of government to try to create that state. It characterises well the borderless world controlled by very large governments you were advocating.
America, at least as its founding fathers envisioned it, has very little of that character. It took the deeply historically-rooted compromises of British liberty and extended the franchise while removing the monarchy. It also remained a slaving nation. That is hardly “utopian” as that world is normally used. You seem to wish to define Utopianism as “wanting a better society”, but that is surely a very empty and eccentric definition.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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^ I think that greatly understates the radicalism at the heart of US independence. While it's worth acknowledging that the Founding Fathers' principles didn't spring up ex nihilo (and I'm sure that liberal ideas from the UK played a role), it was still literally and figuratively a state founded upon revolutionary principles. It was utopian in the sense that its creators were not just imagining a slightly better state (as all politicians do, to some extent or other), but a kind of paradise on earth in which the oppressions of the old world would be left behind.
Anyway, here's somebody else backing up my view, for the sake of the argument:
https://reason.com/archives/1987/03/01/america-as-utopia
| Quote: | In the beginning the American jeremiad was little more than the sermon, but by the early 18th century its essence could be found in secular as well as religious contexts, in passionate support of America the Beautiful as well as Christ. Tirelessly the writers of jeremiads told the story of America, the "city upon a hill," the land of all the hopes and dreams which had been blunted and even destroyed in the Old World.
But with equal ardor the jeremiadists told what was wrong with America in its present hour, told of its secret recesses of wickedness, of evils which had somehow accumulated in the course of America's brief history. And finally, transcendingly, the jeremiad laid out a program of action and reform by which America could recover the innocence that had become lost or tarnished. In each of these thrusts, there lay the conviction that America had, through some combination of divine and historical reasons, become the conscience of the world, at once model and actor.
Those historians who have tried to demonstrate that the American Revolution was a strictly "controlled," "finite," and "contained" revolution, with little if any ecstasy about it, simply haven't read the exultations and the promises of most of the men who carried the Revolution through to success. For Tom Paine, Samuel Adams, and also John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, America of the Revolution was in truth "a city upon a hill" and, moreover, one with the "eyes of all people" upon it. They saw the flames of the American Revolution spreading to South America and Europe and Asia, to all places in due time where people suffered from ignorance, illiteracy, superstition, and tyranny. |
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Well, that’s an interesting post, and thanks for engaging seriously with the topic, but the quote doesnt really touch on utopianism as I reasonably defined it. Every state and nation will have an heroic narrative about itself, as a matter of course. That does not make every state utopian. Nor is radicalism necessarily utopian, as you assume. Thatcherism was fairly “radical”. It was not utopian.
The US Constitution was enacted in the early romantic era, and liberty, the defining romantic ideal, is manifestly at its heart. Now, the essence of liberty and democracy is to accept and place trust in mankind as it is, not to change or mould human nature according to some intellectualised ideal. That’s the difference, it is categorical, and the US is clearly not at the utopian end. This is probably why utopians seem to despise it so.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Culprit 
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
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| Trump can say what he likes, everyone else is a liar when he gets caught out or it's fake news. He sucks everyone in and before anyone goes hang on that's bullshit, it's to late he is already ahead of the game with another bullshit quote. Uses Social media perfectly. History will show Trump is/was full of shit through his whole Presidency. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Does it like him too? |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Culprit wrote: | | Trump can say what he likes, everyone else is a liar when he gets caught out or it's fake news. He sucks everyone in and before anyone goes hang on that's bullshit, it's to late he is already ahead of the game with another bullshit quote. Uses Social media perfectly. History will show Trump is/was full of shit through his whole Presidency. |
- and well before!!
really interesting article!! scary shit too!
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/comment-the-‘genius’-of-trump-what-the-president-means-when-he-touts-his-smarts/ar-AAuEYy3?li=AAavLaF&ocid=spartandhp
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Skids
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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Latest prices for the 2020 Presidential election;
Trump $3.50
Oprah $9
Biden, Pence & Warren $11
Newsom & Harris $15
Michelle $17
Booker $19
Sanders, Ryan, Rubio & Zuckerberg $21
Cuban, The Rock & Bloomberg $26
Clooney $41
Hillary $51
Eminem $67
Leonardo DeCaprio $81
Tom Brady $101
Beyonce $201
Wokko $301
P4S $501
WPT $1001
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Don't count the days, make the days count. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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^ Those odds get pretty silly pretty early on in the piece (Michelle Obama? The Rock?). But then, this is America we're talking about... 
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Skids
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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| David wrote: | | ^ Those odds get pretty silly pretty early on in the piece (Michelle Obama? The Rock?). But then, this is America we're talking about... |
Nah, it's Australias own Sportsbet that frame the market.
They have P.Diddy @ 500/1 to be the next Bond, Erci Bana & Will Smith @ 200/1, David Beckham @ 80/1... Tom Hardy is the fave at 4/1.
For earthlings to make Alien contact in 2018 is 50/1
Trump is 20/1 to meet Kim boy in person in 2018
White house to confirm Melania is in fact a robot in 2018 is 500/1
Trump to challenge eminem to a rap battle on twitter is 500/1
It's quite an entertaining list....
https://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/politics/donald-trump
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Don't count the days, make the days count. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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^ True, a lot of it is just a way to give people a laugh + suck in a few (drunk?) punters. I’m just amazed that such implausible candidates are on par with people who are genuine chances. But then, I was saying the same about Trump to anyone who’d listen...
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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And the problem was the powers that be didn’t realise just how fed up the person on the street was with lying cheating uncaring selfish power hungry unethical politicians.
Apart from his uncouth behaviour, what has he £$%$ed up so far? I mean really £$%$ed up. Genuine question, I have no idea what good or bad he has done, but a black hole didn’t appear! Is it ok to use the black word?
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Trump derangement syndrome is real. It appears David has been infected. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| think positive wrote: | And the problem was the powers that be didn’t realise just how fed up the person on the street was with lying cheating uncaring selfish power hungry unethical politicians.
Apart from his uncouth behaviour, what has he £$%$ed up so far? I mean really £$%$ed up. Genuine question, I have no idea what good or bad he has done, but a black hole didn’t appear! Is it ok to use the black word? |
It’s a fair question : by the standards of GWBush (Iraq, banking system failure, Katrina, 911 security failure), Trump is a total loser in the mayhem stakes. Too brain-dead and lazy. Achieved very little in policy terms except gesture politics and twitter bloviation, but that is probably a reason to be cheerful. Has presided over a tax cut, but that was in the pipeline anyway with the Republican Party. Lots of late sleeping and afternoon naps, it seems. Hopefully he won’t get a burst of energy, as energy without intellect is a bomb.
The only positive I can see is a lack of cant and self-serving piety, which is certainly welcome.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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