[atlantaprog] Re: female guitarists, 2 questions

>Brian wrote:  Libertarians DO believe that
>their way of doing things is more enlightened
>than other ways, hence their advocacy for it.
>
>I would like to illustrate a few words from your
>response here.  You say they consider "their way
>of doing things" to be superior.
>
>What you are saying in effect is that
>Libertarians view a system - a "way of doing
>things (not themselves) - as being superior.
>This is vastly different than the superiority
>involved when people presume to be morally or
>intellectually superior themselves.  One
>"superior view" says that we need to be humble,
>realize that we don't have all the answers, and
>give people the freedom to make their own
>choices.  The other, truely superior view says "I
>AM superior and I shall tell you what you can do
>and what you can't.  A huge difference here in my
>opinion.

But your original premise was that to say that "my way of doing 
things is better than your way" is *exactly* to say that "I am 
superior".  More to the point, I don't appreciate being compared to a 
Bolshevik.  (Besides, the question of freedom in a large, complex 
society isn't very meaningful if you leave out the question of power, 
and in a society which requires large, complex institutions to 
operate the question of who wields power and to what purpose has to 
be addressed.)

I don't think that anyone is saying they "have all the answers", but 
the idea that total omniscience is required to know what a better 
world would be like is just a non-starter.  I mean, are we not living 
in a better world on balance than that of the past?   Lack of 
omniscience didn't stop our ancestors; why should it stop us?

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