I would only disagree on your position that "All men are created equal" is an absurd idea. We all come into the world naked and more or less start out from the same position of helplessness. I'm not sure of a better starting point to base the value of a human life on. All human lives have value that can be built on or destroyed based largely on the choices we make and to a far lesser degree the choices others make that directly affect us.
I think freedoms should be based on the amount of responsibility an individual wants to assume. Voting should be limited to those who could show a certain amount of responsibility in their lives. Perhaps property ownership or monogamous marriage could be indicators of your right to participate in elections. Receiving welfare of any kind should exclude a person from having any say in the process of governance. There will always be those who are content to live on the free grain Caesar provides but they should not have any part in any rule making process but all should be allowed a path to get off of the public dole and earn the right to vote.
A responsible homeowner should maintain the right against unreasonable search and seizure, an irresponsible tent dweller living on the public sidewalk should not.
All people, regardless of station in life should maintain the right to self defense unless they act irresponsibly with that right.
Those who seek to be leaders should be willing to forego the right to privacy, especially in regards to their finances.
This "tiered freedom" idea is interesting. The details would be hard to hammer out, but *something* has to be done about the barely literate junkie having the same level of political influence as the productive farmer.
A good first step would be to bring back land ownership as a prerequisite to voting. That alone would solve a whole host of issues.
Yes. Some people don't want to be free so we shouldn't give them freedom beyond basic human rights. Those who want more will work for it and value it more.
I have mixed thoughts on the IQ question. I'm not convinced that how we currently measure IQ is entirely correct. Many high IQ individuals often find themselves working under a lower IQ individual. Some of it may be the "system" in which they are working (seniority over competency, good ol boy type stuff) but often times higher IQs will be happy working under a lower IQ they respect due to the lower IQ's ability to manage people. The "lower IQ" most likely is intelligent in a way we miss with standard IQ tests. Obviously that doesn't mean that 120+ individuals are often under 85- but a lot of good leaders are in the middle which indicates to me we are missing something.
That being said I think it is a mistake if we try a top down approach to sorting people based on their IQ. You run into problems with the gatekeepers determining what type of intelligence/knowledge is valuable and which is not. You also run into the same problem of corruption/nepotism/good ol boy behavior that will rise up in any system if it isn't properly warded against. Just looking at Biden's judicial nominees inability to answer basic legal questions tells us this problem is rampant in our current system.
Part of that is due to the participation trophy/everybody gets to go to college on taxpayer backed loans mentality we have let fester for the last 50 years but much is due to corruption.
I prefer a system in which those who want to get ahead are free to do so and only held back by their natural and/or self imposed limitations. A limited government approach would allow most people to self sort.
I would not be opposed to standard cognitive tests for anyone wishing to serve in elected office or bureaucratic positions but that system would have to be transparent enough to eliminate the possibility of corruption.
Perhaps for the general public a mix of cognitive testing and measurable ability to act as a responsible citizen to maintain the right to vote would be in order. I wouldn't mind an 85 IQ individual who can manage their finances being able to vote while a bankrupt 130 is barred until he can get his shit together.
Some people like to imagine that "a culture is like a living organism" because they want the current state to end. And that provides the promise that it's going to end. Easy!
They'll say "all empires have fallen, that means they're like organisms that live and die". That's like saying a building is like an organism that lives and dies because eventually it breaks down. Except that's due to erosion and other things that happen to it. The building itself could stand virtually forever.
No, no history magic is going to solve things.
"The earlier, cyclical view which was traditionally held by the medieval Western man" "had understood time holistically"
Sorry, I can't keep reading when I see "cyclical" and "holistical". You know that time moves forward, don't lie to yourself. Or are you saying this moment is repeated endlessly, that maybe we're on the 1 millionth repetition right now? In that case you are crazy. I hope you are not crazy, in which case you know this is the first time you are reading this.
Saying "Western man" in the Middle Ages were a bunch of nuts who thought every moment they experienced repeated endlessly, is false. Especially since you're talking about the Middle Ages - they were hardcore Christian, and Christianity does NOT say the days are repeated over and over. It very clearly lays out a theory about a beginning and an end, with everything moving forward. And we all know that time moves forward. But explaining how it's not REALLY moving forward, that it's REALLY a circle somehow because look-at-the-seasons-they-repeat-like-a-wheel, has been a favorite pastime of hippies and likeminded ever since.
First, buildings are made of materials, while cultures are made of humans. Cultural artifacts might last indefinitely, but cultures are as mortal as the humans they consist of, eg cuneiform tablets exist today, but not the Bronze Age cultures who produced them. Likewise, a building might stand indefinitely, but the human uses of that building can and do change over time, eg from a church, to a mosque, to a museum (can you guess which famous building I'm referring to?).
Second, you don't seem to comprehend cyclical time as opposed to linear; hint, it's not a literal time-loop. Rather, it's a sense of rising and falling, dying and regenerating; history as cycles, rather than the modern Faustian Myth of Progress in which we're on a constant upward trajectory towards perfection. The famous Course of Empire paintings by Cole is another example of cyclical history. This means not only an escape from bad times, but also that good times won't last indefinitely.
So yes, Toynbee and Spengler were right when they characterized civilizations as living organisms. And the story of our times is the decline & senescence of the modern, Faustian West. Tragic really, but all we can do is play our allotted role in the grand tragicomic play of civilization.
Wow, you really go back to comment on an old comment. Writing stuff like "first" or "first of all" is such a tiresome attitude.
Yeah, you demonstrate what Scott Adams said about metaphors, that people get around them simply by saying "ACKSHUALLY look, they aren't the same two things!" Which is the whole point of a metaphor. And my metaphor with the building still stands since buildings are built by humans and countries are built by humans. Neither is a living animal or a human.
"Second", awww, look at that attitude! And you write "you don't seek to comprehend" instead of "understand," you are so intellectual! As expected of someone who talks about "cyclical time" and crap like that. Also "gnostic" and other stuff that are only seen in online forums. Don't you people ever stop and think of why your fantasies only exist in scattered forms here and there online, not in the real world? There is no country on Earth for example where the government or the universities claim that "time is cyclical." But YOU have found something!
"Hint" Get the fuck over yourself little shut-in. You start mouthing off over this issue, that shows you can't make it in the real world.
"hint, it's not a literal time-loop. Rather, it's a sense of rising and falling" No, my dear shut-in, the "cyclical" claim has always been about LITERAL cyclical time. So you are the one who don't "comprehend". When Nietzsche talked about "cyclical time" he meant that time goes in a circle - you know, a cycle - and starts over again. Otherwise it wouldn't be called "cyclical."
"
Xcalibur
Xcalibur
7 hrs ago
First, buildings are made of materials, while cultures are made of humans. Cultural artifacts might last indefinitely, but cultures are as mortal as the humans they consist of, eg cuneiform tablets exist today, but not the Bronze Age cultures who produced them. Likewise, a building might stand indefinitely, but the human uses of that building can and do change over time, eg from a church, to a mosque, to a museum (can you guess which famous building I'm referring to?).
Second, you don't seem to comprehend cyclical time as opposed to linear; hint, it's not a literal time-loop. Rather, it's a sense of rising and falling, dying and regenerating; history as cycles, rather than the modern Faustian Myth of Progress in which we're on a constant upward trajectory towards perfection. The famous Course of Empire paintings by Cole is another example of cyclical history. This means not only an escape from bad times, but also that good times won't last indefinitely.
So yes, Toynbee and Spengler were right" LOL Name dropping, hilarious. And no, civilizations are still not animals or humans, nope, sorry, they aren't even plants. So they aren't alive. They are abstract objects. And there's nothing "cyclical" about them other than in your fantasies about how those who are richer than you will get their comeuppance some day. Your nightmare is that things don't come crashing down so they aren't brought low, terrible.
Next time try to leave your attitude at home and you'll embarrass yourself less, little boy.
Lol, I have no idea why you're getting this salty over a reasonable response. It seems like you're reading all this disrespect in my wording which is not really there. Keep in mind, I sometimes like to catch up on old substack articles, especially from authors with whom I'm less familiar or discovered more recently.
But to cut through this deranged rant and address your points -- in fact, many ancient civilizations saw time as cyclical rather than linear, so that the former is the more traditional framework, as opposed to the latter embraced by the Faustian West and our myth of Progress. And I'd argue that civilizations are essentially emergent organisms, something like eusocial colonies, a view also put forward by Technology's Nest: self-organizing forces shaping human history, by Gregory JE Rawlins, which is quite an interesting read: https://archive.li/rT0yq
I think you assume too much idealism for no good reason. It just sounds implausible that all of this happened because people for no good reason at all started view "time" as a "line" instead of a "circle", whatever that means. Why did they adopt that vibe? How did changes in the gene pool and the environment impact culture? Any serious history needs to take these questions seriously. A history of just ideas is hardly a history at all.
Vaccinating against whatever kind of viruses—mind or otherwise—is never an answer, rather ‘it bodes poorly for the long-term survival of the organism’ 😝 Time is long overripe to also start ‘questioning the assumptions and prevailing [...] orthodoxies’ of the whole vaxx paradigm ‘which we were taught and continue to accept.’
"the distinction between Western and Eastern (or Southern European) collectivism is, therefore, that the former is predicated on freedom from government"
Ah, Americans with their libertarianism. Never in the history of Europe did people ever say "you know, we need to be free from government". Just like they never said we need to be free from private business, until communism came along. Americans lived protected by two oceans, so they never had to fear any invasion, and that's why the libertarian mindset can fester. For others, saying "no government" was a non-starter since that would mean immediate invasion. Everyone understands that you need both government and private business, like we have always had, throughout history. Let's stop with the kid-level philosophizing. Government exists, business exists, and regulation of both exists.
And a country has a central bank and private banks, and neither is evil. Why must some people tread the same kid-level stuff over and over again? On the Right as on the Left. Well, if you want to be on the level of a minuscule cult...
If you think that "Western collectivism" is "predicated on freedom from government," then congratulations, you're a libertarian. Except Western "collectivism" has never been predicated on "freedom from government" except in the minds of "anarcho-libertarians". It's false. It's a lie. By contrast the West has always understood that government is needed. In Britain, in Germany, in France, in Italy, wherever you look. In Roman society, Gothic society, Catholic and Protestant society, everyone understood you need government. That was never debated.
But go ahead, you're welcome to try to prove your false claim. If you can't prove it, thank you for admitting that I'm right and you're wrong.
Aww, you have to go to "you younger!" in order to insult me. LOL No, my dear Brit, I wasn't born after "the Blair revolution". And your BS is hilarious:
'freedom from government' doesn't mean 'government doesn't exist'.
You're an idiot. Being "free from government" as you put it means not being subject to governmental laws. Otherwise you're not "free from government". The only way you'd get to live without laws is if government doesn't exist.
And in all your whining you still haven't proven how "western COLLECTIVISM!" is based on "freedom from government". I asked you to prove that, and you only resort to insults about "you YOUNG!" because you can't answer it. There is no "western collectivism" that is based on "freedom from government". Go ahead, I asked for proof.
You do like the usual ignorant coward and hide behind posting a link. Hilarious. I won't read your BS link to Vimeo if you can't argue for it. You claim that Europe has "its own SIGNIFICANT tradition of opposing government" and say it's "anarchism".
The issue was that the West's "western collectivism", supposedly a big thing as we're talking about ALL western "collectivism" here, would be based on "freedom from government".
And now you claim that the West's "collectivism" is simply the nutcase movement of anarchism. So, not something big at all, just rioters linked to Marxism. That's a great "western collectivism" you got there! That's all you could dig up. What a failure. =)
Sorry buddy, there's virtually nothing in Western history that has been based on opposing the existence of government law, i.e. "freedom from government". Every political question has been about WHAT laws we should have. You know that but you just got captured in your own aggression. "Grrr, someone is defending GOVERNMENT! I must bite!" Then you couldn't stop digging.
Laughing again at your claim that the West's entire "collectivism" is the "anarchist movement," and your proof is a Vimeo video you can't even quote.
By the way, in case you didn't know, "collectivism" means that individual desires have to stand back in favor of rules that are meant to benefit the group, whether the group is a club, a sect, a tribe, a nation, etc. There's a name for that: Laws. There's "collectivism" in every single country, Western or otherwise, when people say individual wishes have to be stopped if they interfere with the laws. For example you aren't allowed to drive any way you want, you have to obey traffic laws that benefit the whole.
Yet you claim that the "collectivism" in the West - not just SOME, but ALL of "western collectivism" - is based on "freedom from government," which means not having to obey government laws, if it means anything at all.
All of it. The "western collectivism," you say. Hilarious.
Hmm, I guess Catholic and Protestant churches aren't Western then, French and German and Italian and Spanish nationalists aren't Western, as any Westerners who say people should have to obey a government's laws apparently aren't collectivists. Right?
I would only disagree on your position that "All men are created equal" is an absurd idea. We all come into the world naked and more or less start out from the same position of helplessness. I'm not sure of a better starting point to base the value of a human life on. All human lives have value that can be built on or destroyed based largely on the choices we make and to a far lesser degree the choices others make that directly affect us.
I think freedoms should be based on the amount of responsibility an individual wants to assume. Voting should be limited to those who could show a certain amount of responsibility in their lives. Perhaps property ownership or monogamous marriage could be indicators of your right to participate in elections. Receiving welfare of any kind should exclude a person from having any say in the process of governance. There will always be those who are content to live on the free grain Caesar provides but they should not have any part in any rule making process but all should be allowed a path to get off of the public dole and earn the right to vote.
A responsible homeowner should maintain the right against unreasonable search and seizure, an irresponsible tent dweller living on the public sidewalk should not.
All people, regardless of station in life should maintain the right to self defense unless they act irresponsibly with that right.
Those who seek to be leaders should be willing to forego the right to privacy, especially in regards to their finances.
This "tiered freedom" idea is interesting. The details would be hard to hammer out, but *something* has to be done about the barely literate junkie having the same level of political influence as the productive farmer.
A good first step would be to bring back land ownership as a prerequisite to voting. That alone would solve a whole host of issues.
Yes. Some people don't want to be free so we shouldn't give them freedom beyond basic human rights. Those who want more will work for it and value it more.
Unfortunately, pointing out this glaringly obvious fact makes you the second cousin of Hitler in most people's eyes.
I have mixed thoughts on the IQ question. I'm not convinced that how we currently measure IQ is entirely correct. Many high IQ individuals often find themselves working under a lower IQ individual. Some of it may be the "system" in which they are working (seniority over competency, good ol boy type stuff) but often times higher IQs will be happy working under a lower IQ they respect due to the lower IQ's ability to manage people. The "lower IQ" most likely is intelligent in a way we miss with standard IQ tests. Obviously that doesn't mean that 120+ individuals are often under 85- but a lot of good leaders are in the middle which indicates to me we are missing something.
That being said I think it is a mistake if we try a top down approach to sorting people based on their IQ. You run into problems with the gatekeepers determining what type of intelligence/knowledge is valuable and which is not. You also run into the same problem of corruption/nepotism/good ol boy behavior that will rise up in any system if it isn't properly warded against. Just looking at Biden's judicial nominees inability to answer basic legal questions tells us this problem is rampant in our current system.
Part of that is due to the participation trophy/everybody gets to go to college on taxpayer backed loans mentality we have let fester for the last 50 years but much is due to corruption.
I prefer a system in which those who want to get ahead are free to do so and only held back by their natural and/or self imposed limitations. A limited government approach would allow most people to self sort.
I would not be opposed to standard cognitive tests for anyone wishing to serve in elected office or bureaucratic positions but that system would have to be transparent enough to eliminate the possibility of corruption.
Perhaps for the general public a mix of cognitive testing and measurable ability to act as a responsible citizen to maintain the right to vote would be in order. I wouldn't mind an 85 IQ individual who can manage their finances being able to vote while a bankrupt 130 is barred until he can get his shit together.
Some people like to imagine that "a culture is like a living organism" because they want the current state to end. And that provides the promise that it's going to end. Easy!
They'll say "all empires have fallen, that means they're like organisms that live and die". That's like saying a building is like an organism that lives and dies because eventually it breaks down. Except that's due to erosion and other things that happen to it. The building itself could stand virtually forever.
No, no history magic is going to solve things.
"The earlier, cyclical view which was traditionally held by the medieval Western man" "had understood time holistically"
Sorry, I can't keep reading when I see "cyclical" and "holistical". You know that time moves forward, don't lie to yourself. Or are you saying this moment is repeated endlessly, that maybe we're on the 1 millionth repetition right now? In that case you are crazy. I hope you are not crazy, in which case you know this is the first time you are reading this.
Saying "Western man" in the Middle Ages were a bunch of nuts who thought every moment they experienced repeated endlessly, is false. Especially since you're talking about the Middle Ages - they were hardcore Christian, and Christianity does NOT say the days are repeated over and over. It very clearly lays out a theory about a beginning and an end, with everything moving forward. And we all know that time moves forward. But explaining how it's not REALLY moving forward, that it's REALLY a circle somehow because look-at-the-seasons-they-repeat-like-a-wheel, has been a favorite pastime of hippies and likeminded ever since.
First, buildings are made of materials, while cultures are made of humans. Cultural artifacts might last indefinitely, but cultures are as mortal as the humans they consist of, eg cuneiform tablets exist today, but not the Bronze Age cultures who produced them. Likewise, a building might stand indefinitely, but the human uses of that building can and do change over time, eg from a church, to a mosque, to a museum (can you guess which famous building I'm referring to?).
Second, you don't seem to comprehend cyclical time as opposed to linear; hint, it's not a literal time-loop. Rather, it's a sense of rising and falling, dying and regenerating; history as cycles, rather than the modern Faustian Myth of Progress in which we're on a constant upward trajectory towards perfection. The famous Course of Empire paintings by Cole is another example of cyclical history. This means not only an escape from bad times, but also that good times won't last indefinitely.
So yes, Toynbee and Spengler were right when they characterized civilizations as living organisms. And the story of our times is the decline & senescence of the modern, Faustian West. Tragic really, but all we can do is play our allotted role in the grand tragicomic play of civilization.
Wow, you really go back to comment on an old comment. Writing stuff like "first" or "first of all" is such a tiresome attitude.
Yeah, you demonstrate what Scott Adams said about metaphors, that people get around them simply by saying "ACKSHUALLY look, they aren't the same two things!" Which is the whole point of a metaphor. And my metaphor with the building still stands since buildings are built by humans and countries are built by humans. Neither is a living animal or a human.
"Second", awww, look at that attitude! And you write "you don't seek to comprehend" instead of "understand," you are so intellectual! As expected of someone who talks about "cyclical time" and crap like that. Also "gnostic" and other stuff that are only seen in online forums. Don't you people ever stop and think of why your fantasies only exist in scattered forms here and there online, not in the real world? There is no country on Earth for example where the government or the universities claim that "time is cyclical." But YOU have found something!
"Hint" Get the fuck over yourself little shut-in. You start mouthing off over this issue, that shows you can't make it in the real world.
"hint, it's not a literal time-loop. Rather, it's a sense of rising and falling" No, my dear shut-in, the "cyclical" claim has always been about LITERAL cyclical time. So you are the one who don't "comprehend". When Nietzsche talked about "cyclical time" he meant that time goes in a circle - you know, a cycle - and starts over again. Otherwise it wouldn't be called "cyclical."
"
Xcalibur
Xcalibur
7 hrs ago
First, buildings are made of materials, while cultures are made of humans. Cultural artifacts might last indefinitely, but cultures are as mortal as the humans they consist of, eg cuneiform tablets exist today, but not the Bronze Age cultures who produced them. Likewise, a building might stand indefinitely, but the human uses of that building can and do change over time, eg from a church, to a mosque, to a museum (can you guess which famous building I'm referring to?).
Second, you don't seem to comprehend cyclical time as opposed to linear; hint, it's not a literal time-loop. Rather, it's a sense of rising and falling, dying and regenerating; history as cycles, rather than the modern Faustian Myth of Progress in which we're on a constant upward trajectory towards perfection. The famous Course of Empire paintings by Cole is another example of cyclical history. This means not only an escape from bad times, but also that good times won't last indefinitely.
So yes, Toynbee and Spengler were right" LOL Name dropping, hilarious. And no, civilizations are still not animals or humans, nope, sorry, they aren't even plants. So they aren't alive. They are abstract objects. And there's nothing "cyclical" about them other than in your fantasies about how those who are richer than you will get their comeuppance some day. Your nightmare is that things don't come crashing down so they aren't brought low, terrible.
Next time try to leave your attitude at home and you'll embarrass yourself less, little boy.
Lol, I have no idea why you're getting this salty over a reasonable response. It seems like you're reading all this disrespect in my wording which is not really there. Keep in mind, I sometimes like to catch up on old substack articles, especially from authors with whom I'm less familiar or discovered more recently.
But to cut through this deranged rant and address your points -- in fact, many ancient civilizations saw time as cyclical rather than linear, so that the former is the more traditional framework, as opposed to the latter embraced by the Faustian West and our myth of Progress. And I'd argue that civilizations are essentially emergent organisms, something like eusocial colonies, a view also put forward by Technology's Nest: self-organizing forces shaping human history, by Gregory JE Rawlins, which is quite an interesting read: https://archive.li/rT0yq
I think you assume too much idealism for no good reason. It just sounds implausible that all of this happened because people for no good reason at all started view "time" as a "line" instead of a "circle", whatever that means. Why did they adopt that vibe? How did changes in the gene pool and the environment impact culture? Any serious history needs to take these questions seriously. A history of just ideas is hardly a history at all.
Vaccinating against whatever kind of viruses—mind or otherwise—is never an answer, rather ‘it bodes poorly for the long-term survival of the organism’ 😝 Time is long overripe to also start ‘questioning the assumptions and prevailing [...] orthodoxies’ of the whole vaxx paradigm ‘which we were taught and continue to accept.’
"the distinction between Western and Eastern (or Southern European) collectivism is, therefore, that the former is predicated on freedom from government"
Ah, Americans with their libertarianism. Never in the history of Europe did people ever say "you know, we need to be free from government". Just like they never said we need to be free from private business, until communism came along. Americans lived protected by two oceans, so they never had to fear any invasion, and that's why the libertarian mindset can fester. For others, saying "no government" was a non-starter since that would mean immediate invasion. Everyone understands that you need both government and private business, like we have always had, throughout history. Let's stop with the kid-level philosophizing. Government exists, business exists, and regulation of both exists.
And a country has a central bank and private banks, and neither is evil. Why must some people tread the same kid-level stuff over and over again? On the Right as on the Left. Well, if you want to be on the level of a minuscule cult...
If you think that "Western collectivism" is "predicated on freedom from government," then congratulations, you're a libertarian. Except Western "collectivism" has never been predicated on "freedom from government" except in the minds of "anarcho-libertarians". It's false. It's a lie. By contrast the West has always understood that government is needed. In Britain, in Germany, in France, in Italy, wherever you look. In Roman society, Gothic society, Catholic and Protestant society, everyone understood you need government. That was never debated.
But go ahead, you're welcome to try to prove your false claim. If you can't prove it, thank you for admitting that I'm right and you're wrong.
Aww, you have to go to "you younger!" in order to insult me. LOL No, my dear Brit, I wasn't born after "the Blair revolution". And your BS is hilarious:
'freedom from government' doesn't mean 'government doesn't exist'.
You're an idiot. Being "free from government" as you put it means not being subject to governmental laws. Otherwise you're not "free from government". The only way you'd get to live without laws is if government doesn't exist.
And in all your whining you still haven't proven how "western COLLECTIVISM!" is based on "freedom from government". I asked you to prove that, and you only resort to insults about "you YOUNG!" because you can't answer it. There is no "western collectivism" that is based on "freedom from government". Go ahead, I asked for proof.
You do like the usual ignorant coward and hide behind posting a link. Hilarious. I won't read your BS link to Vimeo if you can't argue for it. You claim that Europe has "its own SIGNIFICANT tradition of opposing government" and say it's "anarchism".
The issue was that the West's "western collectivism", supposedly a big thing as we're talking about ALL western "collectivism" here, would be based on "freedom from government".
And now you claim that the West's "collectivism" is simply the nutcase movement of anarchism. So, not something big at all, just rioters linked to Marxism. That's a great "western collectivism" you got there! That's all you could dig up. What a failure. =)
Sorry buddy, there's virtually nothing in Western history that has been based on opposing the existence of government law, i.e. "freedom from government". Every political question has been about WHAT laws we should have. You know that but you just got captured in your own aggression. "Grrr, someone is defending GOVERNMENT! I must bite!" Then you couldn't stop digging.
Laughing again at your claim that the West's entire "collectivism" is the "anarchist movement," and your proof is a Vimeo video you can't even quote.
By the way, in case you didn't know, "collectivism" means that individual desires have to stand back in favor of rules that are meant to benefit the group, whether the group is a club, a sect, a tribe, a nation, etc. There's a name for that: Laws. There's "collectivism" in every single country, Western or otherwise, when people say individual wishes have to be stopped if they interfere with the laws. For example you aren't allowed to drive any way you want, you have to obey traffic laws that benefit the whole.
Yet you claim that the "collectivism" in the West - not just SOME, but ALL of "western collectivism" - is based on "freedom from government," which means not having to obey government laws, if it means anything at all.
All of it. The "western collectivism," you say. Hilarious.
Hmm, I guess Catholic and Protestant churches aren't Western then, French and German and Italian and Spanish nationalists aren't Western, as any Westerners who say people should have to obey a government's laws apparently aren't collectivists. Right?