Obviously it was a good thing that it was banned, but I’m just wondering if it would technically be considered authoritarian.
As in, is any law that restricts people’s freedom to do something (yes, even if it’s done to also free other people from oppression as in that case, since it technically restricts the slave owner’s freedom to own slaves), considered authoritarian, even if at the time that the law is passed, it’s only a small section of people that are still wanting to do those things and forcibly having their legal ability to do them revoked?
Or would it only be considered authoritarian if a large part of society had their ability to do a particular thing taken away from them forcibly?
Your rights end at the point where they infringe on someone else’s rights.
Like, it’s my right to walk where I want but it’s not my right to walk into your house. Because it’s your right to own private property.
Secondly, authoritarianism is not about how many people the law affects. It’s about style of governance.
“One’s rights end where another’s begin” - Morally speaking I agree with this, and I’ve heard this phrase used by animal rights activists to argue that humans shouldn’t have the right to violate animals’ (moral) rights to be free, to not be killed, harmed, exploited etc. at least by humans who are moral agents & don’t need to do so.
Again, there is a difference between moral and legal rights. Just like in the case of human slavery where some humans technically had the legal right to enslave other humans - and I would agree that those laws were unethical to begin with since the moral rights of those slave owners to do things (“positive” rights) ended where the moral rights of the victims to be free from oppression/harm/etc (“negative” rights) began - many people argue that the current legal rights of humans to, basically, enslave & kill non-human animals, are similarly built on unethical laws, and don’t translate to moral rights, in the sense that humans’ rights also end where other animals’ rights begin, morally speaking (such a position would of course entail action to liberate non-human animals via boycotting of animal exploitation (veganism) as a moral obligation, similarly to how when the laws that enabled people to own slaves were in place, boycotting the slave trade and being an abolitionist would also be considered a moral obligation by most people today).
Yes i.e. the paradox of tolerance
Yes, and it was good authority to exercise.
Enforcing an equal opportunity environment is only authoritarian if your definition of authoritarian is anything that challenges antinomianism.
I think you are lost in the language. There are no absolute rights, in any legal systems. So any “law” necessarily restricts someone’s “rights”.
Therefore, you need to think about what “authoritarian decision” means, because if all law restricts someone’s rights, all laws are authoritarian by your definition.
Also: terrible example to begin with.
I was about the comment a similar thing.
If having a law that restricts one’s ability to do something is “authoritarian” then any law is authoritarian, because laws, by definition, determine what behaviour is and isn’t allowed within a society.
This sounds like a semantic argument, so… definitions.
Authoritarian - 1) of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority
Slavery is blind submission. Forbidding authoritarianism isn’t authoritarian. Kinda like how destruction of the self (suicide) cannot be selfish, despite what some will argue.
As in, is any law that restricts people’s freedom to do something
The problem of this approach is that in that case you refuse any law. Even anarchist would agree that a stateless society need people to agree on common rules.
Speed limit ? restrict your freedom to do something, private property ? Restrict your freedom to go where you want, does restricting your freedom to commit murder feels authoritarian ?
Now what’s more authoritarian ? having the state protecing your right to have slave ? Or having the state protecting people freedom by not letting someone enslave them.
Insofar as authoritarian is a useful metric (not very), Yes and it was good
Natural language is inherently imprecise. You’re going to have to add a contextual definition if you want this to have a single answer.
If making someone do something is always authoritarian, abolition is authoritarian to slavers and anti-authoritarian to slaves. If implementing a law with no checks and balances is authoritarian, it was authoritarian when Louis XIV did it, but maybe not in other cases. If a policy that upholds any kind of hierarchy is authoritarian, it’s always anti-authoritarian.
I would go further to say that if “making someone do something” is the definition, literally any action taken by any government is authoritarian. If a government did not make people do things, it would functionally cease to be.
Yep. That’s the definition Marxists have gravitated to historically, and by that definition everyone is authoritarian and we should stop worrying about it. There’s quotes I’m sure someone here would be happy to supply.
I think it is a bit unfair to give you shit for your question.
it is normal to confuse authoritarian system with restrictions of freedom. Because generally that is how it works. But not in this case…
Because it is the paradox of tolerance all over again. Technically it is authoritarian to ban slavery but it would be more authoritarian to allow it as people would own people… So on the scale of how authoritarian an action is, banning slavery is as anti-authoritarian as it gets and allowing slavery is as authoritarian as it gets. (Of course, a world without slavery and without any rules would be less authoritarian but… I think we know better than trying that with slavery)
I hope this helps in actually understanding the reason instead of being told what it is.
It’s not at all unfair when instead of thanking people for their answers, they’re rewording what they have said to ask in a different way just to try to act like their hypothesis is right.
Playing Devil’s Advocate is one thing, taking the time to try to effectively say that people should think Lincoln was authoritarian because he removed a legal “right” is another.
The STAMP act was legal, and our ancestors rebellled and got a country out of it (among other things). Law does not make right. And that’s what the OP doesn’t understand. He’s using semantics to try to make up something that simply isn’t true.
Edit: And technically Lincoln didn’t change the law, the 13th Amendment did. Lincoln simply created a proclamation that slaves in most areas (note that it wasn’t all slaves everywhere in the states, deals were struck to omit some areas from the proclamation) are to be considered free because it was a way to help win the Civil War. It was both morally right, and a strategic move. If that is to be considered authoritarian, then every single executive order that presidents make should also be considered authoritarian. But again, it’s simply not true in our system of government (however plagued by dysfunction it is these days).
Yes it’s autharitarian to ban slavery. Kind like a revolution is autharitarian. Don’t really get the people who don’t want to impose , what ya gonna do? Ask nicely?
This sounds like another version of the “definition of freedom”.
Is freedom being unrestricted from doing whatever you want? Or is it protection from people doing whatever they want that would otherwise injure you?
I guess I’d argue that banning slavery in the middle of a culture that embraces it is, in fact, authoritarian. Similarly, enabling slavery in the middle of a culture that rejects it is also authoritarian.
It gets more interesting when the population is split on what they want policy to be. I think Prohibition is a better comparison since it’s less emotionally charged.
Was enacting Prohibition authoritarian? Sure seems that way, even though it had a lot of support. Was rolling it back also authoritarian? The people who originally supported it and now see it taken away probably feel it’s authoritarian.
IMO as long as people are happy to argue with each other about basic definition of words, the answer to the original question is “it doesn’t matter”.
Maybe. I guess authoritarianism is good sometimes.
Significantly less authoritarian than slavery.
No, it was anti-authoritarian, as it removed the authority slave holders had over their slaves.
Just as it imposed authority over them to take away their authority, right?
Net authority decreased(by removing the authority imposed on slaves by the slavers), so it’s anti-authoritarian, right?
Sure, if you look at it from a utilitarian perspective I suppose.
