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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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Since when has license being equivalent to freedom become "objective"?

"This is not liberty, this is license" has always been a tyrant's excuse.

'Anything goes' has always been the rallying cry of those who want to tear down civilization. Tyrants and anarchists both love to twist language to suit their ends. Call it license or call it degeneracy, either way, it’s not freedom worth defending.

When one uses the word "freedom" in its most common, everyday meaning of "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action", that's not twisting language, that's just using the most common, everyday meaning of the word. I would argue that it's actually more of a twisting of language to use the word "freedom" to mean something more philosophical, like you are doing. But in any case, this is just a semantic argument.

Is slavery to the passions coercion?

Who are you to claim everyone's equally slaved to such passions?

I feel like completely inventing claims out of thin air like this kinda defeats the purpose of this forum and is specifically against the rules. What possesses you to do that?

My question has absolutely no bearing on how widespread this phenomenon is, I'm just asking if it counts. Since you know, it's fairly well known issue that requires some clarification.

Since you know, it's fairly well known issue that requires some clarification.

It certainly does- what are "the" passions?

If you're going with the answer of "lust and degeneracy" (which is what I believe you were implying, and what it directly says upthread) that's just "stop liking what I don't like" with the letters rearranged. While you've correctly identified every other response to that argument are [more sophisticated] "no, also fuck you"s, the argument they contain- that being "who decides, and why should the failure of others to control themselves be my problem; and the fruits of my virtue redistributed, stolen at gunpoint, to benefit those without?"- hasn't been answered.

In a sibling comment, you quote

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites

but I am more qualified for civil liberty because I have that disposition. So your "license", that you might demand I forfeit for the salvation of others, is at the same time inherently granted to me simply by being better at this than most people are, thus claiming I don't deserve this liberty is little more than theft.

what are "the" passions?

Pleasures and pains.

I am more qualified

Then why do you take mere discussion of the phenomenon as an attack on your rights?