| sc94597 said: 2. I disagree first with your suggestion that persons in the enlightment era believed they knew most of the world. This wasn't called the age of reason and empiricism without proper substance. I secondly disagree with your use of the phrase "human nature." When one speaks of human nature one is only speaking of the qualities that are common to all or almost all human beings. The rights to life, liberty, and the estate summarized this human nature well in 1791 and today in 2015 just the same. So when a document is constructed to protect the corollaries of said rights, it does not hold any less valid in 2015 than it did in 1791. The various inventions have not affected the intent and logic behind the codification of rights. 3. I was speaking of the origins and ends of governments. The monopolies you alluded to would not exist without the backing of force. Whether it is the framers presupposing how the other ten million Americans and future Americans want to be governed, a mobocracy in which the individual is at the whims of a majority absolutely, a king who thinks of persons as his property, etc etc it is all substantiated by the use of force to secure monopolies in law, power, money, defense, and a plethora of other goods and services. That is the nature of government the use or threat of monopolic force. |
2. My contention focused on their awareness, or lack thereof. If a document is to be a fully-informed expression of human will and desire then it most certainly should be lacking the input and insight of the majority. If the document is a reflection of the prevailing sensibilites (which it was), then it is a reflection of the sentiment that women and blacks (amongst other minorities) are incapable of sophisticated decision-making. That precept was and is inherently flawed, yet it guided the rationale behind the drafting. From the outset, the character of human nature that is prescribed therein is incomplete and insufficient. This is only exacerbated by the fact that these elite, white men were not simultaneuosly integrating the female (for obvious reasons) perspective or "nature." No matter the enlightenment fo their perspectives, they were doomed to a myopic characterization of human nature that was an incomplete data set. Ergo, a document constructed to protect "the rights to life, liberty, and the estate "can very easily be "less valid[sic] in 2015 than it did in 1791." The fact that the primary precepts of the constitution have been largely sufficient speaks volumes to their forethough and wherewithal, despite the aforementioned limitations.
3. I think this comes down to a matter of semantics, with regards to perceived force. If one controls the means of production, they can "force" those who need their products to meet their demands. All of this can be dome without any physical exertion or construct: their power can be intrinsically linked to privately held, necesary knowledge (trade secret) to produce. This is why I belive that power is the true prerequisite, because it is inclusive of force. "Force" just seems to lack the appropriate depth and breadth, in my opinion, to capture the multitudinous ways one can exert control.
Conceptually, I do not believe that are that far apart.
