I will never forgive that woman for her divisive measures and apparent delight in creating a two-tier society. I do not believe that this could ever be the actions of a ‘kind’ person. She appeared cold and vindictive with no attempt to understand
those who did not want to take part in a medical experiment.
Any leader who has gone along with the coercion and bullying that led to ‘punishment’ for exerting bodily autonomy deserves what is coming to them.
No, if we could do our own research so could they, they are paid to represent us... they did not and still do not listen. When confronted with the information (from both experts in the field and from the average Joe) they doubled down.
Predictable...and predicted...result of leaders substituting social and behavioral science for wisdom. Sixty years ago the eminent philosopher and legal scholar, Walter Berns*(1), wrote of times like these, the allure and hazards of weak leaders who's ignorance and arrogance in blindly following "the best science" as a substitute for wisdom merely informed by social and natural sciences. This information was out there for today's leaders to be cautioned and humbled by.
The first half of his work is a game-theory presentation of how the law, jurisprudence, could be informed by behavioral sciences. Which is how the Roberts Court has operated since he became Chief Justice. He is a behaviorist.*(2) Selected excerpts below. If you find it TL/DR then skip to the final paragraph or two in Part 2 contained in the comment below. The excerpts provide richness and contextual understanding of the concepts that speak directly to what has happened to leadership in the ensuing six decades after his warnings were published.
Law and Behavioral Science. Law and Contemporary Problems
"Thus, consideration of the problems arising in political life point to the question of the best possible political order or the best possible laws: all political decisions, whether by the framers of constitutions, legislators, administrators, judges, or masters in chancery, are based, consciously or unconsciously, on a view of what is good for man. The political philosopher claimed to possess this knowledge and therefore claimed to be the teacher of those for whom this knowledge was relevant. His science (scientia: knowledge) was knowledge of what is good for man. The numerous references to Montesquieu in the Federalist Papers, to Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in other writings of the framers of our Constitution, as well as the Lockian language adopted by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, all attest to the extent to which political philosophers were accepted as teachers by the men who brought this country into being."
"Behavioral science denies the very possibility of knowledge of what is good for man and, necessarily therefore, denies the possibility of an objective common good. It therefore denies the very premise on which the old-fashioned political and legal science was built."
"The explanation of this seeming anomaly lies in the redefinition of science. The new science eschews all interest in the best political order or in the best laws, and confines itself to acquiring information as to the way men behave. To justify its claim as a science, as opposed to a form of journalism or social recording, it adopts the "scientific method," involving itself in mathematics, hypotheses, models, developmental constructs, predictions, and the like, modeling itself on what is probably regarded as the queen of the sciences today, physics. And just as physics culminates in a body of laws describing the physical universe, behavioral science would culminate in a body of laws describing the social universe. The science of man will be a science of human behavior. Behavioral science is a science because its methods are "scientific," because they are "similar to those of the natural sciences," and because it limits its inquiry to what can be verified empirically. Since the goodness of a law or a constitution cannot be verified empirically, which means that its goodness cannot be seen or touched by one of the senses, questions of the goodness of laws are of no concern to these new scientists as scientists. The social scientist "cannot be an advocate in his role as scientist. Nevertheless, a major part of the work done by behavioral scientists in the law assumes a knowledge of what is good for man.
"Which of the social science disciplines is most likely to possess, or to have access to, the resources, now that all of them have based themselves on the so-called separation of facts and values and declared their incompetence to speak on the question of what is good for man? The answer is probably psychology - at least, the question is most likely to assert itself there. As Lon Fuller said a few years ago in the context of a discussion of psychology and modern jurisprudence, psychoanalysis assumes that the purpose-forming system called a man may be in need of being "straightened out," and at the same time contains within itself the sign posts that will direct the straightening-out process ... [and if] the psychoanalyst does not do something roughly equivalent to helping his patient realize his "true nature" then his whole profession loses intelligible meaning."
"The Constitution was intended to "establish Justice," and one's conception of justice is necessarily related to one's conception of what is proper to man's nature. The Constitution was not ordained and established by "adjusters"; it was defended at the time of its greatest trial not by a conformer, a seeker of the easy way, but by Abraham Lincoln. Any psychology that cannot distinguish between the nobility of a Lincoln and the ignobility of a well-adjusted nonentity, any psychology that does not despise people whose horizon is limited to the consumption of food to satisfy the hunger drive, the seduction of women to satisfy the sex drive, or the reduction of psychic tension, is scarcely qualified to speak of the human condition, and its prescriptions, therefore, deserves but a limited standing in the courts of the land. "
"when the social scientists generally are excited at the prospect of playing a new role in the law, that it becomes necessary to enter a word of caution. These thirty-two may state their purpose modestly, but Feuer and Fromm want to reorganize society; Myrdal may disclaim any policy role for his science as science, but Harold Lasswell has in mind the establishment of what one of his critics has called a "psychoanalytocracy" - that is, rule by psychoanalysts.
If men are certain that they know the cure for the ills of society, they are likely to become impatient with traditional legal principles and procedures which have always been thought important precisely because of the great difficulty in knowing what is good for man, and what is good for man here and now. This does not mean that this knowledge is unattainable in principle, but only that, originally, it was thought to be within the competence of only a few exceptional persons to achieve it, and that these persons did not seek political power."
"The social scientists involved in the sterilization movement (and it was a national movement) were convinced that human inheritance was governed by Mendel's findings regarding pea plants-one of Virginia's expert witnesses had proved this to his own satisfaction by his studies of the Jukes family. The case, which culminated in Justice Holmes' famous epigram, "three generations of imbeciles are enough," was a feigned suit, initiated at the request of the eugenicists in order to win constitutional blessing for their program. This they accomplished, even though their so-called science was wholly unfounded."
"Praise of the Nazi racial policy continued even as they pressed their "model" sterilization law on state after state, until the number of states with such statutes had grown from the twenty-one at the time of the Virginia case to twenty-seven a decade later. Perhaps the day will come when, as Judge Miller said in the Parmelee case, "social scientists can advise not only courts, but the people generally; just as physicians ... do today," but Buck v. Bell illustrates the hazards potentially involved and as well the failure of the courts to scrutinize a program cast in the language of science. This was science polluted by a vicious brand of politics, but when science asserts itself in the law, there is always the danger, and the strong possibility, that it will become irresponsible.
Certainly moderation does not characterize the principal work of scientific jurisprudence in our day, Frederick K. Beutel's Experimental Jurisprudence. If Beutel is to be believed, we are on the threshold of a solution to man's most fundamental problems; all that is required is the transfer of "the techniques and knowledge so successfully developed in the physical sciences ... into the field of social control ...." His book is to be understood as a defense and an illustration of such transfer. It is with his defense that we shall be primarily concerned. Man, he says, has achieved power over nature but not over himself; the "philosophy of social control" has not kept pace with "the revolutionary developments of physical science," which has engendered grave "mental, political and social maladjustments."
anyone in a position of power has surely read some history and knows what happens when you set aside a group for demonization. these people cannot be forgiven
Elected officials are supposed to do what they were elected to do, they're supposed to be like employees, not big brother or a nanny state telling their citizens what to do. It was always clear to me that the reactions to COVID were MIXED. There was always disagreements on how to handle it and how to best care for personal health.
Because there were disagreements, not everyone would mask or vaccinate themselves and not everyone would want to lockdown. If everyone agreed masks, vaccines, and lockdowns were good and beneficial, AND they agreed that COVID was bad enough that they thought those measures were the best option, then there would never be a need to mandate it because people would have WILLFULLY wore a mask, got vaccinated, and stayed home.
The only reason leaders put mandates out to wear a mask, vaccinate, stay inside, was because they knew that people wouldn't have willfully done it. There is no other way to see a mandate, right? The only reason you mandate something is because you know people won't do it willfully. So, they knew what they were doing on that front. They just didn't care.
Personally I believe that there should never have been social mandates like these because using it proves that people are opposed to it, so the mandates were not the will of the people. You can see how drastic that was if there was data on how many people stopped masking on airplanes as soon as the mandate was lifted. Some people still do, the majority never wanted to.
If there has been no asking for forgiveness, an admission that what they did was wrong, then there should be no excusing them from their desire to be authoritarians. If they continue to scapegoat and not take responsibility, then can we really call them leaders? Looks like they were following the bunk "science." That makes them followers, not leaders.
Why should there be forgiveness? If they are confronted with credible evidence that they are wrong and are too arrogant to change, more and more people are harmed whom otherwise would not suffer. Ardern is a member of the WEF, and someone who has close ties to the CCP. She is an evil woman. Shouldn't we be asking ourselves why so many mass murderers get to die in bed unpunished, like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, etc., and if someone murders only one or just a few people they are punished? Perhaps we are over-civilized.
I will never forgive that woman for her divisive measures and apparent delight in creating a two-tier society. I do not believe that this could ever be the actions of a ‘kind’ person. She appeared cold and vindictive with no attempt to understand
those who did not want to take part in a medical experiment.
Any leader who has gone along with the coercion and bullying that led to ‘punishment’ for exerting bodily autonomy deserves what is coming to them.
Absolutely not. Leaders lead by taking responsibility.
NO! They wanted authority over the lives and livelihoods of other people, and therefore need to be held to a higher standard of behavior.
Hell no!
No, if we could do our own research so could they, they are paid to represent us... they did not and still do not listen. When confronted with the information (from both experts in the field and from the average Joe) they doubled down.
"Shall we excuse our leaders for their tyrannical Covid policies because they were lied to?"
No, let's not.
Predictable...and predicted...result of leaders substituting social and behavioral science for wisdom. Sixty years ago the eminent philosopher and legal scholar, Walter Berns*(1), wrote of times like these, the allure and hazards of weak leaders who's ignorance and arrogance in blindly following "the best science" as a substitute for wisdom merely informed by social and natural sciences. This information was out there for today's leaders to be cautioned and humbled by.
The first half of his work is a game-theory presentation of how the law, jurisprudence, could be informed by behavioral sciences. Which is how the Roberts Court has operated since he became Chief Justice. He is a behaviorist.*(2) Selected excerpts below. If you find it TL/DR then skip to the final paragraph or two in Part 2 contained in the comment below. The excerpts provide richness and contextual understanding of the concepts that speak directly to what has happened to leadership in the ensuing six decades after his warnings were published.
Law and Behavioral Science. Law and Contemporary Problems
Walter Berns, Winter, 1963
Duke University School of Law
https://sci-hub.st/10.2307/1190729
"Thus, consideration of the problems arising in political life point to the question of the best possible political order or the best possible laws: all political decisions, whether by the framers of constitutions, legislators, administrators, judges, or masters in chancery, are based, consciously or unconsciously, on a view of what is good for man. The political philosopher claimed to possess this knowledge and therefore claimed to be the teacher of those for whom this knowledge was relevant. His science (scientia: knowledge) was knowledge of what is good for man. The numerous references to Montesquieu in the Federalist Papers, to Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in other writings of the framers of our Constitution, as well as the Lockian language adopted by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, all attest to the extent to which political philosophers were accepted as teachers by the men who brought this country into being."
"Behavioral science denies the very possibility of knowledge of what is good for man and, necessarily therefore, denies the possibility of an objective common good. It therefore denies the very premise on which the old-fashioned political and legal science was built."
"The explanation of this seeming anomaly lies in the redefinition of science. The new science eschews all interest in the best political order or in the best laws, and confines itself to acquiring information as to the way men behave. To justify its claim as a science, as opposed to a form of journalism or social recording, it adopts the "scientific method," involving itself in mathematics, hypotheses, models, developmental constructs, predictions, and the like, modeling itself on what is probably regarded as the queen of the sciences today, physics. And just as physics culminates in a body of laws describing the physical universe, behavioral science would culminate in a body of laws describing the social universe. The science of man will be a science of human behavior. Behavioral science is a science because its methods are "scientific," because they are "similar to those of the natural sciences," and because it limits its inquiry to what can be verified empirically. Since the goodness of a law or a constitution cannot be verified empirically, which means that its goodness cannot be seen or touched by one of the senses, questions of the goodness of laws are of no concern to these new scientists as scientists. The social scientist "cannot be an advocate in his role as scientist. Nevertheless, a major part of the work done by behavioral scientists in the law assumes a knowledge of what is good for man.
"Which of the social science disciplines is most likely to possess, or to have access to, the resources, now that all of them have based themselves on the so-called separation of facts and values and declared their incompetence to speak on the question of what is good for man? The answer is probably psychology - at least, the question is most likely to assert itself there. As Lon Fuller said a few years ago in the context of a discussion of psychology and modern jurisprudence, psychoanalysis assumes that the purpose-forming system called a man may be in need of being "straightened out," and at the same time contains within itself the sign posts that will direct the straightening-out process ... [and if] the psychoanalyst does not do something roughly equivalent to helping his patient realize his "true nature" then his whole profession loses intelligible meaning."
"The Constitution was intended to "establish Justice," and one's conception of justice is necessarily related to one's conception of what is proper to man's nature. The Constitution was not ordained and established by "adjusters"; it was defended at the time of its greatest trial not by a conformer, a seeker of the easy way, but by Abraham Lincoln. Any psychology that cannot distinguish between the nobility of a Lincoln and the ignobility of a well-adjusted nonentity, any psychology that does not despise people whose horizon is limited to the consumption of food to satisfy the hunger drive, the seduction of women to satisfy the sex drive, or the reduction of psychic tension, is scarcely qualified to speak of the human condition, and its prescriptions, therefore, deserves but a limited standing in the courts of the land. "
"when the social scientists generally are excited at the prospect of playing a new role in the law, that it becomes necessary to enter a word of caution. These thirty-two may state their purpose modestly, but Feuer and Fromm want to reorganize society; Myrdal may disclaim any policy role for his science as science, but Harold Lasswell has in mind the establishment of what one of his critics has called a "psychoanalytocracy" - that is, rule by psychoanalysts.
If men are certain that they know the cure for the ills of society, they are likely to become impatient with traditional legal principles and procedures which have always been thought important precisely because of the great difficulty in knowing what is good for man, and what is good for man here and now. This does not mean that this knowledge is unattainable in principle, but only that, originally, it was thought to be within the competence of only a few exceptional persons to achieve it, and that these persons did not seek political power."
"The social scientists involved in the sterilization movement (and it was a national movement) were convinced that human inheritance was governed by Mendel's findings regarding pea plants-one of Virginia's expert witnesses had proved this to his own satisfaction by his studies of the Jukes family. The case, which culminated in Justice Holmes' famous epigram, "three generations of imbeciles are enough," was a feigned suit, initiated at the request of the eugenicists in order to win constitutional blessing for their program. This they accomplished, even though their so-called science was wholly unfounded."
"Praise of the Nazi racial policy continued even as they pressed their "model" sterilization law on state after state, until the number of states with such statutes had grown from the twenty-one at the time of the Virginia case to twenty-seven a decade later. Perhaps the day will come when, as Judge Miller said in the Parmelee case, "social scientists can advise not only courts, but the people generally; just as physicians ... do today," but Buck v. Bell illustrates the hazards potentially involved and as well the failure of the courts to scrutinize a program cast in the language of science. This was science polluted by a vicious brand of politics, but when science asserts itself in the law, there is always the danger, and the strong possibility, that it will become irresponsible.
Certainly moderation does not characterize the principal work of scientific jurisprudence in our day, Frederick K. Beutel's Experimental Jurisprudence. If Beutel is to be believed, we are on the threshold of a solution to man's most fundamental problems; all that is required is the transfer of "the techniques and knowledge so successfully developed in the physical sciences ... into the field of social control ...." His book is to be understood as a defense and an illustration of such transfer. It is with his defense that we shall be primarily concerned. Man, he says, has achieved power over nature but not over himself; the "philosophy of social control" has not kept pace with "the revolutionary developments of physical science," which has engendered grave "mental, political and social maladjustments."
(Part 1 of 2 - comment below contains Part 2)
anyone in a position of power has surely read some history and knows what happens when you set aside a group for demonization. these people cannot be forgiven
Elected officials are supposed to do what they were elected to do, they're supposed to be like employees, not big brother or a nanny state telling their citizens what to do. It was always clear to me that the reactions to COVID were MIXED. There was always disagreements on how to handle it and how to best care for personal health.
Because there were disagreements, not everyone would mask or vaccinate themselves and not everyone would want to lockdown. If everyone agreed masks, vaccines, and lockdowns were good and beneficial, AND they agreed that COVID was bad enough that they thought those measures were the best option, then there would never be a need to mandate it because people would have WILLFULLY wore a mask, got vaccinated, and stayed home.
The only reason leaders put mandates out to wear a mask, vaccinate, stay inside, was because they knew that people wouldn't have willfully done it. There is no other way to see a mandate, right? The only reason you mandate something is because you know people won't do it willfully. So, they knew what they were doing on that front. They just didn't care.
Personally I believe that there should never have been social mandates like these because using it proves that people are opposed to it, so the mandates were not the will of the people. You can see how drastic that was if there was data on how many people stopped masking on airplanes as soon as the mandate was lifted. Some people still do, the majority never wanted to.
If there has been no asking for forgiveness, an admission that what they did was wrong, then there should be no excusing them from their desire to be authoritarians. If they continue to scapegoat and not take responsibility, then can we really call them leaders? Looks like they were following the bunk "science." That makes them followers, not leaders.
Why should there be forgiveness? If they are confronted with credible evidence that they are wrong and are too arrogant to change, more and more people are harmed whom otherwise would not suffer. Ardern is a member of the WEF, and someone who has close ties to the CCP. She is an evil woman. Shouldn't we be asking ourselves why so many mass murderers get to die in bed unpunished, like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, etc., and if someone murders only one or just a few people they are punished? Perhaps we are over-civilized.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Harvard law degrees and evil deeds.