Frankgol, please throw your verbal hand grenades at the right target in future - it was Col whom you believe is responsible for misrepresenting your post.

Mark, an interesting article at the other end of the link provided, but could you expand upon it a little, as I can't quite tell whether you are expressing agreement or disagreement.

>>This view is, of course, the standard liberal one... that we have dignity as humans because of a freedom to choose our actions according to our own individual will and reason.<<

Not sure why this should be labelled this way, but I have to ask - if this is the "standard liberal" view, what is the "conservative" one?

>>Note that all that liberals care about is that we are self-directed according to our own values. This, in their opinion, is sufficient to create a human dignity. My values could be anything at all, but as long as they are mine and I am free to enact them, I am fulfilling my moral status as a human.<<

You appear to be falling into the same hole again. In order to take a quick whack at "liberals", you ascribe to them the notion that the availability of choice automatically entitles it to be used for evil, ergo choice per se is evil, QED.

It is sounding suspiciously like a straw man, where the indefensible position - using the sanctity of choice to justify paedophilia - is being allocated to your perceived enemies, those nasty liberals.

Bad Liberals. Drop it.

Pericles, you’re right. It was not you I should have targeted. Please accept my sincere apologies. I’ll be more careful with attributions in future. I hope the collateral damage wasn’t too upsetting.

Col Rouge, everything I addressed to Pericles about gratuitous twaddle should have been addressed to you. I’d be interested in your response.

Pericles, Mark and Frank..... are u blokes trying to do me out of lines ?
I cannot think of a better argued case for the need for (and from my perspective ‘existence of’) reference to revealed truth as a basis for moral choices.

Pericles points us to the Clockwork Orange character who stopped being human when he could not fulfill his need to hurt people. Reference to Paedophilia are used to support the idea of ‘evil’ choices. The ‘Liberal’ view seems to be that true humanity and fulfillment only comes when we are free to EXercise our choices, be they evil or good.

Oh.. another point, I hope NO-one of you ever tells me that our values are not dictated as much by philosophers via art, media and education as by our supposed ‘intrinsic’ value system that humanists rave on about.

Nambla is constantly telling us the Man/Boy sexual experiences can be ‘positive’. But as Kyle on the SouthPark episode about them says “Dude.. you have sex with children”.. then again (when they don’t get it) “DUDE... you have SEX with CHILDREN !”...... etc...

For some, values are relative to ‘whatever turns you on’ and Burgess in CWO suggests that when individuals are not able to fulfill their choices they cease to be human. This is of course the existentialist view of life where right and wrong exist only in the individual mind and are arbitrary concepts.

The problem though, is that while Pericles views such activity as ‘attacking’ children as ‘clearly evil’ sadly, it is not only ‘not clear’ for a significant element among us, but they would regard US as the weirdo’s for not adopting a similar position.

The 10 commandments have never seemed so unassailably wise and solid as when I read threads like this one. (not as ‘laws’ but as a foundation for moral choices and social values)

Failure to recognize this, gives us “Alex” and who knows where he might pop up..perhaps in the form of child porn in the Crown Prosecuter’s office in Sydney ?

thank you grandkiddies, for pointing out the reality of life for many people.

i always enjoy the smugness of the fortunate claiming credit for their good fortune, and wagging their finger at those with less access to choices than they have, for daring to desire or claim a fair go - even for their children.

the purpose of a publicly funded education system ( and all aust schools are publicly funded) in a civilised society is to help iron out the inevitable inequalities of opportunity that are visited upon all of us at birth, not to exaggerate and intensify them. We tax everyone when we promote and encourage only those who are lucky due to an accident of birth rather than on actual talent and merit.

You can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, not by how many "choices" it gives to its most privileged.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,

The french hit the nail on the head with their revolutionary slogan.

Liberty means access to the choices championed by mr Farrelly.
Equality means that everyone has access to all (or most) choices (ie social justice).
Fraternity means that we don't begrudge access to these choices to anyone else (ie social harmony).

Priviledges bestowed by accident of birth see to it that not everyone has access to the same choices. We attempt to remedy this by taxation and redistribution of wealth. I don't see anything wrong with it.

While I am all for lots of choices, a world without social justice or social harmony would become a Darwinian free-for-all and not a nice place to live in. At the risk of sounding like a politician that would be frankly unaustralian and some compromises must be made.

Gusi, you haven't considered what went wrong with the "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" belief. The French Revolution led to tyranny. Most intelligent people, including young progressive types, had recoiled from any sympathy with it by the year 1800.

The natural forms of connectedness between people are usually unchosen. For instance, I don't "choose" to have a connection to my mother or father or other members of my family. I don't "choose" to have a connection to my fellow countrymen or to people of my own ethny. I don't get to "choose" a sense of connectedness to members of my own sex.

Therefore, when "liberty" is defined as being able to choose, it usually means an insistence that natural forms of connectedness are overthrown in favour of purely political ones. We get to be citizens and members of voluntary associations and little more.

That's why the kind of "liberty" promoted in the French Revolution doesn't lead to a stable kind of "fraternity" at all, but to an atomisation, in which it is assumed that society is made up of millions of blank-slate individual wills, each pursuing its own desires.

Some people think these individual wills can be harmonised through the state (left-wingers), some through the free market (right-wingers). Genuine conservatives don't take sides in this debate, because we don't strip individuals of natural forms of connectedness in the first place.