In democracies of the type which is regarded as being peculiarly democratic the policy followed is the very reverse of their real interest. The reason for this is a false conception of liberty. There are two features which are generally held to define democracy. One of them is the sovereignty of the majority; the other is the liberty of individuals. Justice is assumed to consist in equality and equality in regarding the will of the masses as sovereign; liberty is assumed to consist in “doing what one likes.” The result of such a view is that, in these extreme democracies, each individual lives as he likes — or as Euripides says,
For any end he chances to desire.
This is a mean conception [of liberty]. To live by the rule of the constitution ought not to be regarded as slavery, but rather as salvation.
This is a quote by Aristotle, yes that dude from thousands of year ago. Funny, how some things never change.
Notice Aristotle describes the "false sense of liberty". Aristotle is describing an early form of what we consider to be negative liberty vs. positive liberty. Aristotle believes "democracies" and essentially what we would consider to be modern liberalism ends in the maximization of negative liberty which is "for any end he chances to desire". Is this not how women function also? Doing whatever they please with no rules or restrictions? No care for anything else?
Aristotle makes the argument for a constitution in which democracy is controlled by a set of rules. These rules are what one may associate with positive liberty. Positive liberty is the idea that restrictions on oneself that end up preventing people from falling into vice is actually a good thing because after all, what good is the freedom to shoot up heroin if all you end up as is a heroin addict?
This is where liberals and Imp always fail. Most men cannot handle total negative freedom without falling into vices that actually leads to a worse outcome for the men. This is especially and doubly true for the women. Having sets of rules that restrict people's negative freedom actually leads to an increase in positive freedom and thus an increase in freedom overall.
Women will never as a whole make the right choice if not forced into it and only the most virtuous of men will make the right decisions with total negative freedom. Even the most virtuous men can benefit from rules on them. If all the rules on you restrict you from doing actions you would never do anyway then you actually have none of your freedom restrict in practice.
The only way to get women to make the right decision is to enforce it on them.
Benjamin Franklin actually alludes to a lot of the above in the following quote:
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
What Franklin is saying is only very virtuous people can have total negative freedom because only such a people will use this freedom to make the right decisions. Once people start making wrong decisions then you need to implement more restrictions on them in order to maximize positive freedom. The thing about what Franklin is saying though is that if you're going to end up having to restrict people who make bad decisions anyway, then why even maximize negative freedom? Just keep the restrictions in all the time because good people simply won't make the wrong decision in the first place so these restrictions won't impact them, they will only impact people trying to make the wrong decision.
At the end of the day, the idea of letting women have maximum negative freedom is wrong. This will never work. Women will never come around to make the right decision. Women lack the capability to and so do most men. Women must be controlled with a strict set of rules to follow and men must enforce those rules on women.
There are always masters. It's just a question of who they are and what checks might stop them from going off the rails. A virtuous people enforces those virtues even if it's only in the most innocuous ways like raising their kids a certain way or treating potentially subversive outsiders with distrust.
For TheImp and many others like him, they see maximum negative freedom for themselves as the ideal. They would have an existential crisis if they admitted this was bullshit dangled in front of them to maintain this liberal system of control so they instead insist that their failure to achieve the unattainable (for all non-oligarchs) could only be the result of some "undesirables" (women in this case) getting in the way.
Sure but not in that way. Liberals are blinded by the illusion that their conception of liberation is attainable to anyone except oligarchs.
This is a quote by Aristotle, yes that dude from thousands of year ago. Funny, how some things never change.
Notice Aristotle describes the "false sense of liberty". Aristotle is describing an early form of what we consider to be negative liberty vs. positive liberty. Aristotle believes "democracies" and essentially what we would consider to be modern liberalism ends in the maximization of negative liberty which is "for any end he chances to desire". Is this not how women function also? Doing whatever they please with no rules or restrictions? No care for anything else?
Aristotle makes the argument for a constitution in which democracy is controlled by a set of rules. These rules are what one may associate with positive liberty. Positive liberty is the idea that restrictions on oneself that end up preventing people from falling into vice is actually a good thing because after all, what good is the freedom to shoot up heroin if all you end up as is a heroin addict?
This is where liberals and Imp always fail. Most men cannot handle total negative freedom without falling into vices that actually leads to a worse outcome for the men. This is especially and doubly true for the women. Having sets of rules that restrict people's negative freedom actually leads to an increase in positive freedom and thus an increase in freedom overall.
Women will never as a whole make the right choice if not forced into it and only the most virtuous of men will make the right decisions with total negative freedom. Even the most virtuous men can benefit from rules on them. If all the rules on you restrict you from doing actions you would never do anyway then you actually have none of your freedom restrict in practice.
The only way to get women to make the right decision is to enforce it on them.
Benjamin Franklin actually alludes to a lot of the above in the following quote:
What Franklin is saying is only very virtuous people can have total negative freedom because only such a people will use this freedom to make the right decisions. Once people start making wrong decisions then you need to implement more restrictions on them in order to maximize positive freedom. The thing about what Franklin is saying though is that if you're going to end up having to restrict people who make bad decisions anyway, then why even maximize negative freedom? Just keep the restrictions in all the time because good people simply won't make the wrong decision in the first place so these restrictions won't impact them, they will only impact people trying to make the wrong decision.
At the end of the day, the idea of letting women have maximum negative freedom is wrong. This will never work. Women will never come around to make the right decision. Women lack the capability to and so do most men. Women must be controlled with a strict set of rules to follow and men must enforce those rules on women.
There are always masters. It's just a question of who they are and what checks might stop them from going off the rails. A virtuous people enforces those virtues even if it's only in the most innocuous ways like raising their kids a certain way or treating potentially subversive outsiders with distrust.
For TheImp and many others like him, they see maximum negative freedom for themselves as the ideal. They would have an existential crisis if they admitted this was bullshit dangled in front of them to maintain this liberal system of control so they instead insist that their failure to achieve the unattainable (for all non-oligarchs) could only be the result of some "undesirables" (women in this case) getting in the way.