• oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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    7 months ago

    Of course, they change overtime, do you want to respect the rules written in the Old Testament?
    We educate the people to free thinking, and then we ask them to vote, that’s how democracy is supposed to work. It’s not perfect, and it has ups and downs, but we do have made some progress considering the past centuries.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      No, I want to find out what American values we’re supposed to live up to, not what Iron Age Jewish values we’re supposed to live up to. What are they and what makes them American values?

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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        7 months ago

        I think they come from the European Humanism and Enlightenment, they are not American specific. Equality in rights and opportunities, social liberalism, economical liberalism, religious/origin tolerance, rationality, democracy.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          What makes those our values? I don’t see anything in our founding documents that reflect things like equality in rights and opportunities or social liberalism or economic liberalism.

          If you want to acknowledge religious tolerance as described in the Bill of Rights, you also have to acknowledge the 3/5ths compromise.

          As far as rationality or democracy, those have never been American values.

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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            7 months ago

            Aren’t the 18th century human rights part of the early documents or referenced in it?

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Sure. And those documents include saying black people are 3/5ths of a person. You can ignore that if you like, I guess.

              • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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                7 months ago

                I’m not ignoring that, I’m trying to answer.
                Those documents are major improvements, but there are still not completely extracted from their historical context. For example, the French “Men Rights” willingly ignored the mention of women, despite feminists campaigning for it. Even if some of the influences were impressively progressive philosophers, they were all still pretty damn sexist, which was the norm at this time.
                There’s no absolute truth for values, people who think there is, are religious people. Best we can do is finding a consensus, the modern Human Rights is the best we have, I think.

          • Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Horseshit, you replied to my quote of the Declaration of Independence’s preamble where it laid those out

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              The Declaration of Independence was, again, written before America was a country. It is not a legal document either. And it is religious. So you’re saying American values come from a document that was written before there was an America, which expressly was not respecting all religious beliefs but at the same time saying those values can change. It sounds like American values are whatever you believe them to be.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        There’s some overlap between the two.

        I think what makes something some country’s values is either the government publicly adopting or enough of the population doing so. That doesn’t mean anyone is actually living up to those values. Might not even be trying.

        And then there’s the question, their values from whose perspective? Americans might say thing X is their value but outsiders might look at them and conclude their value is Y. So there’s no one set of coherent values that hold true from all perspectives.